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How to Build Up rurnace 
Efficiency 

A Hand-book of Fuel Economy 



(Including - a few snorts about Industrial Efficiency and other 

thing's. "Written for the men who pay for the fuel 

and the men who burn it) 



By 

JOS. W. HAYS 

Combustion Engineer 
Author of 



'The Chemistry of Combustion," "Combustion and Smokeless 

Furnaces," "How to Get More Power From Coal," 

"How to Stop the Fuel Wastes," etc. 



FIFTEENTH EDITION 
Revised and enlarged (ninety-fifth thousand) 

Price, $1.00 

Post-paid to any part of the world 

JOS. W. HAYS, Publisher 

Michigan City, Indiana, U. S. A. 
1919 









Copyright 1919 by 
JOS. W. HAYS 



All rights reserved — 
including- the rights of translation 



Copyright in Norway and published in Danish and Norwe- 
gian by Samuel Eie, Slemdal, Christiana. 



Copyright in Great Britain and published at Dover, Eng- 
land, by the Dover Printing and Publishing Co., Ltd., 144 
Snargate Street. 



Copyright in Sweden and published in Swedish at Stock- 
holm by Samuel Eie. 



Copyright in Brazil and published in Portuguese at Sao 
Paulo by Edward L. Rolfe. 



>AN -5 i920 






<y)CI.A559268 

'WO \ 



<3 



HOW TO BUILD UP FURNACE EFFICIENCY 

(In Five Reels) 



Why Your Fuel is Wasted 15 

How Your Fuel is Wasted 50 

How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes 72 

How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes 95 

How to Keep the Wastes Stopped 126 

APPENDIX 

Oils, Gas, Wood Refuse and Other Fuels 164 



PREFACE TO THE FIFTEENTH EDITION 

In the early part of 1908 the author tendered a manuscript 
to the editor of an engineering magazine. It was returned 
with the following comment: 

"Your paper is too technical. We get more technical articles 
than we can use. We want practical articles written in a pop- 
ular way and we can't get them. Cut out the "high-brow" stuff 
and let us have something- that the great mass of our readers 
can peruse Av^ith interest and profit." 

The result of this advice was the first edition of "How to 
Build Up Furnace Efficiency," published in 1908. It was 
brought out with many misgivings. Was it really possible to 
treat the rather technical subject of combustion in a really 
popular way — something that had never been attempted by 
anyone before? Would the public want such a treatment even 
if the treatment were successful? These questions were not 
long in being answered. The first edition was exhausted, 
almost as soon as the announcement of publication was made. 
Succeeding and larger editions fiollowed the first one. 

The present edition, counting the foreign editions, is the 
fifteenth complete publication, and translations are now being- 
made for other foreign editions. Counting all publications, 
the book has now reached its ninety-fifth thousand. 

Many things were omitted in the previous editions that 
should have been said and some things were said that might 
have been omitted. In the present edition, sufficient charts, 
diagrams and illustrations are used to make clear some of 
the things that it is hard to explain in the printed page. 
Certain instruments and apparatus designed by the author 
are illustrated. In showing these it is not intended to dis- 
parage other apparatus of like character. The illustrations 
are given for the sole purpose of showing the "tools" that 
the author has used in prosecuting combustion studies and 
in working out specific furnace efficiency problems in many 
plants. 

Cartoons have been used rather liberally in this edition 
and it is hoped that they will serve to emphasize some of the 
arguments that the author has tried to make. 

It is in no spirit of self-flattery that the author refers 
to the past success of his book. If credit is due anyone it 
belongs to the editor who offered the advice above quoted. 



AN APPEAL. 

The author feels that a real service is being performed in 
passing this advice along to other writers. Let us stop writing 
for technical men who are already well grounded in all the 
theory of engineering. There are relatively few of such men 
as compared with the great multitude who want results first 
and who are content to let theories rest until results have been 
accomplished. Treat the engineering subject in a really pop- 
ular way and your book will be read by appreciative thou- 
sands. Treat it in a, really technical way and it will be read 
by a few hundreds. 

Very little is said in this book relating to the theory of 
combustion. The author has tried to write for the men who 
pay for the fuel and the men who burn it. They are interested 
i:i theory, of course, but they are more interested in practical 
and immediate results. They expect, in a work of this kind, 
advice and suggestions that will be helpful — something that 
they can apply at once in the every-day work of operating- an 
every-day steam power plant. 

One can easily determine where to begin when setting 
about to discuss the chemistry of combustion, but it is difficult 
to determine where and when to stop. For this reason and 
the others given, the author has thought best to make no 
beginning at all. In the present edition of "How to Build Up 
Furnace Efficiency," as in the previous ones, the sole effort 
has been to show the Manager, Superintendent, Engineers and 
Firemen of the power plant how they may proceed at one? to 
actually work a real reduction in the coal bills. To this 
practical end no understanding of theories is necessary. The 
unlettered fireman may become an expert flue gas analyst 
and reach the very top notch of efficiency in the combustion 
of fuel without knowing or caring what the atomic weight 
of carbon may be or why one atom of carbon unites with 
two of oxygen to form the gas COl>. It has been represented 
and it is generally understood that the contrary is true. Xo 
more mischievous representation was ever made with reference 
to any engineering proposition. It is costing the power plants 
of the country millions of dollars. The average steam plant 
wastes a quarter of its fuel. It will go on wasting that quarter 



6 Preface. 

until it is recognized that the men to stop the waste are the 
ones who are doing the wasting. 

To burn coal or any other fuel economically is mainly 
a matter of method and as the method to be used varies with 
the character of the fuel and the conditions under which it is 
to be burned, the use of certain apparatus to determine the 
proper method is necessary in every power plant. It would 
be, indeed, unfortunate if the apparatus called for special skill 
or special knowledge on the part of the user. Any man who 
can read a scale and watch the nickering flame of a tallow 
candle is qualified to bring any boiler furnace up to the highest 
state of efficiency consistent with the fuel and the furnace 
equipment. It will not be disputed that your fireman is able 
to read a thermometer and tell you how cold or how hot it may 
be in the boiler room, or that he is competent to use platform 
scales and weigh your coal. It is not considered that as a 
preliminary to using the thermometer one must understand the 
involved mathematics on which the science of thermometry 
depends or that, as a preliminary to weighing a barrow of coal, 
one must be able to explain the laws of the lever discovered 
by Archimedes. You are familiar with scales and thermome- 
ters and you go ahead and use them. You are not familiar 
with draft gages and gas analyzers — hence you believe that a 
diploma from a technical school is necessary before you 
can use them. 

Every statement and recommendation made by the author 
has been proved by actual experiment and practice to the 
satisfaction of many people. Try the methods suggested before 
you pass adverse judgment upon them. 

The author feels called upon to apologize for the frequent 
use of the pronoun "I" in the pages that follow. The reader 
must understand that every line of the book has been written 
right of the writer's personal experiences and in setting these 
forth the pronoun in the first person has obtruded itself 
repeatedly. 

The author does not claim to be "the law and the 
prophets" on the subject treated. The reader must take the 
writer's opinions and experiences for what they are worth 
upon their face. 



Preface. 7 

Anecdotes have been liberally used throughout the book 
for purposes of illustration and in deference to these the 
author has followed a narrative style of writing which it is 
hoped may assist in sustaining, the reader's interest until he 
has finished the book. 

Combustion is a dry subject when considered as an ab- 
stract proposition. It is not a dry subject when "human 
interest" is injected into it. It even has its humorous phases. 

The author believes that the methods of "spotting" and 
stopping fuel wastes described in this book are extremely 
simple. They may not appear so to the reader. It is difficult 
tc describe a very simple operation to a person who is entirely 
unacquainted with it and in preparing the book the author 
has assumed that the reader is not familiar with the subject 
discussed. It is quite probable that many persons reading the 
book are better grounded in both the theory and the practice 
of the matter than the author. To such as these no apology 
is offered, because the book is not written for them. 

The author confesses to the use of rather unvarnished 
language in some places and he knows that the Manager 
and Engineer will accept his criticisms with the same good 
nature in which they are offered. 

JOS. W. HAYS. 
Michigan City, Indiana, U. S. A., Sept. 1, 1919. 



Tlii* liook is devoted entirely to practice. If you 
are interested in both theory and practice, see 
page 181. 



"Be sure to write about me, honest; what- 
ever you do, do not prettify ine; include all 
the hells and damns," 

— Walt Whitman. 



8 AN APPEAL. 



TO THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS: 

This appeal is addressed to you because another fuel 
limine threatens us. You can avert that famine by prompt 
and proper action and you can prevent future famines by 
enforcing the practice of fuel economy in this country. And 
when you enforce fuel economy you cut down the high cost 
of living, which, economists say. is at the root of the social 

irbances that threaten to engulf us. We believe that you. 
Mr. President and Congress, should be held personally re- 
osible to our people for any future fuel shortages. We 
believe this because we know that you can prevent all fuel 
famines and that you are the only people who can prevent 
them. It is now up to us to show you why t! 

You were quick to recognize that the late world war was 
a war of machinery, that fuel was necessary to the machinery 
of production and of transportation. You created the National 
Fuel Administration as an emergency war measure. Dr. Gar- 
field, an able, honest and truly patriotic man. was placed at 
the head of the fuel administration and he had the wisdom 
to surround himself with some of the best Combustion 
Engineers in the United States. ' He again in his will- 

ingness to take the advice of his advisory engineers 

It is not our purpose to lay any wreaths upon the grave 
of the now dead-and-gone Fuel Administration. Rest its soul. 
It had its troubles. We will let it pass by saying that in our 
opinion the National Fuel Administration in the brief period 
of its fretful existence did more to arouse an interest in fuel 
economy among the consumers of fuel than all of the other 
agencies combined that have worked toward that end since the 
day wheD the first savage struck a spark from a flint and dis- 
covered fire. This is not hyperbole. We actually believe it. 
We. with others, drilled away at the public conscience for 
years, talking and writing about fuel economy, and while we 
may have made some dents in that adamantine thing we were 
never able to discover them. The National Fuel Administra- 
tion in one short, swift operation drilled a nice, clean hole 
clear through that public conscience. Every sinful fuel 
waster repented and '"hit the trail" with an enthusiasm that 
would have delighted the Rev. Billy Sunday. You couldn't see 



An Appeal. 9 

the mourner's bench for the dust that was kicked up in the 
general stampede. 

How was the national Fuel Administration able to bring 
about such a sudden and universal interest in fuel economy? 
You had conferred authority upon it by a very appropriate 
bit of emergency legislation. It was able to say. in effect. 
"How much fuel are you wasting? You may have the fuel that 
you require if you will practice real fuel economy but you 
shall not have a single pound more. Stop wasting fuel or go 
without fuel." The average fuel waster thinks about fuel 
waste when he is forced to think about it. When he is not 
forced to do so he thinks about other things. If the work 
started by the National Fuel Administration could only be 
continued there would never be another fuel famine with the 
sufferings that such a famine entails. The price of fuel 
would come down and with it the cost of living. There is fuel 
in almost everything that we eat. drink, wear. use. enjoy and 
do. There is fuel in the message that you receive over the 
telephone: in the "near-beer" that you are now drinking while 
you wish lor the real stuff ilia; you legislated out of existence: 
in the imitation leather of your so-called shoes; in the grape- 
fruit on your breakfast table, and in the thousand other things 
that you think are necessary to your daily lives. Fuel is the 
most important commodity in all the world at the present 
time. Vv'e wish that we could make you see that. 

Stop transportation and a large proportion of our people 
would starve. Shut down the factories and we should be 
robbed of other necessities scarcely less essential than food. 
Stop the supply of fuel and not a wheel would turn either upon 
the rails or in the factories. No ships could leave our shores. 
Incidentally we should all freeze. Without fuel the war would 
have been lost and it is therefore not too much to say that 
"Fuel won the war." 

Nation of wasters that we have been, there is nothing 
that we have wasted to the extent that we have wasted fuel. 
The world's supply of mineral fuel cannot be increased or 
replenished. Every pound that is used or wasted represents 
a draft upon an account that cannot be replenished by more 
deposits. About 25 per cent of the fuel used in industrial 



10 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

plants is wasted at the furnace. About 23 per cent is wasted 
between the furnace and the machine in the factory where the 
energy is applied. These wastes are preventable and inexcus- 
able. They have nothing to do with other losses that cannot 
be avoided in the conversion of fuel into applied energy. This 
48 per cent of the fuel that we are mining and hauling to our 
factories to be wasted through ignorance and carelessness, 
does not belong to us. It is the property of posterity and you 
are unworthy stewards, MR. PRESIDENT and CONGRESS, if 
you neglect any means that you may take to conserve our 
fuel resources. FIND SOME WAY TO PERPETUATE THE 
WORK OF THE NATIONAL FUEL ADMINISTRATION. 

When we undertake to visualize the fuel that is annually 
wasted in the United States we get a most astonishing picture. 
Forgetting for the moment that there are other fuels than coal, 
let us consider coal alone. We are mining coal in the United 
States at the rate of more than 600,000,000 tons per annum. 
As already stated, about 48 per cent of our fuel is needlessly 
wasted. The preventable waste in the boiler room, alone, of 
the average steam plant is all of 25 per cent. The best 
engineering authorities in the country agree that this estimate 
is conservative; that we are away within the actual facts 
when we assume that a quarter of the coal used in this 
country for industrial purposes is uselessly wasted at the 
furnace and boiler. This means that our requirement could 
easily be met with 75 per cent of the fuel we are now burn- 
ing. One hundred and fifty million tons of needlessly wasted 
coal is "quite some considerable" pile of fuel. Loaded upon 
freight cars, it would make a train more than 28,000 miles 
long. Imagine such a train completely belting our planet with 
a lap-over of 3,000 miles, every car of it loaded to the full 
with coal — with the commodity that is now worth $60.00 a 
ton and upwards in the countries of some of our former 
European allies. The preventable waste of fuel in the United 
States each year easily exceeds the total annual output of all 
of the Illinois coal fields. What adjective can we use as a 
qualifier for waste of such magnitude? 

MR. PRESIDENT and CONGRESS, you spent incredible 
sums of money in the work of destruction. We furnished that 



An Appeal. 11 

money gladly and asked very few questions about the ways 
in which it was expended. We don't know how much you 
wasted. We do know that if you had come out of your shells 
a couple of years earlier you could have planned things in a 
really efficient way. "Haste means waste," always, and you 
certainly had to hurry after you started. You did in one year 
what it took Germany 40 years to accomplish, but, Oh, Mur- 
der! what it cost us and will cost our grand-children! This 
book is not the place to discuss the mistakes that were made 
both before and after our entry into the war. It is the place 
to discuss a mistake that you are making at this moment. We 
have mentioned your waste of money because we have a hunch 
that when the time comes to do something for fuel you will 
go on one of your periodical sprees of parsimony and refuse 
to do anything because it will cost something. You are either 
spending money like a drunken lumberman or squeezing 
pennies like a miser. Some Congressman is sure to bob up 
pretty soon and call himself the "watch-dog of the treasury." 
He will have a numerous following both in and out of Congress 
and we know that when a bill is presented proposing to do 
something for fuel it will be opposed because the thing will 
cost something. It surely will cost our people something if 
you do not enact and enforce a law to insure the conservation 
and proper distribution of fuel. 

When future fuel famines come let the responsibility for 
them be placed where it belongs — upon the President and 
Congress of the United States. 

If properly utilized there is fuel enough in the United 
States to meet our requirements for generations, possibly 
until science can discover some new means of providing the 
world with heat, light and power. Important as the problem 
of conservation may be, it is not of such pressing and imme- 
diate importance as the problems of production, of distribu- 
tion and of cost to the ultimate consumer. If we could save 
the 150,000,000 of tons or more that we are annually wasting- 
there would be no coal shortage in the United States and 
those problems would be settled. The cost of living would 
go down because fuel enters into practically everything that is 
necessary to life. MR. PRESIDENT and CONGRESS, it is 



12 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

your business as stewards of our National Wealth to see that 
fuel is not wasted and that it is so distributed that there shall 
never be occasion again for want and suffering in our country 
on account of fuel shortage. 

LOOK OX THIS PICTURE. 




THE IXFIMTE FUEL WASTE IX THE UNITED STATES. 



An Appeal. 



AND THEN OX THIS — 




SALVAGING AN INFNITESOIAL FRACTION OF THE 
INFINITE WASTE. 

From your scats in a comfortable Pullman you liave seen 
this picture enacted in more than one icy railroad yard — you 
have seen an old woman with a shawl over her head, risking: 
her lire among- the moving trains for a basketful of coal. 



»Ir. President and Congress 



Unless yon do something*, and do it now, we see a belly- 
lull of trouble ahead of ns for this fall and winter. The 
country will be wondering about Thanksgiving time what on 
earth, if anything, it has to be thankful for. Other people see 
a fuel famine coming. It is your business to see it and to 
tike steps for its prevention. 



14 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The following is quoted from an editorial in a leading 
daily paper: 

COAL TROUBLES AHEAD. 

The coal journals are now warning - the public that "con- 
certed action" must be taken if consumers are to be protected 
from a very great increase in the cost of coal due to the latest 
demands put forward by the miners. These demands involve a 
six-hour day and an advance of 40 to 60 per cent in wages. 
The seriousness of the situation is indicated by the fact that 
there have already been strikes for the sole purpose of protest- 
ing against the miners' own officials, who insist that the present 
contract, which has something more than a month to run, shall 
be carried out. 

On the part of the operators it is intimated that rather than 
engage in a protracted struggle with the unions just at a time 
when the need for coal is beginning to be greatest, they will 
simply make the best bargain they can with the miners. And as 
usual, the extra cost will be passed on to the consumer. 

The cost will, of course, affect everybody. Coal has become 
such a fundamental factor in our society that any rise in price 
is almost immediately reflected in the price of everything else. 
The landlord of the apartment building is forced to advance the 
rent; the utility companies, gas, electric light, and traction, ask 
for higher rates; the railroads must seek higher revenues, and 
every manufacturing concern has to devise means of increasing 
its income. In Chicago we have seen the retail price of coal 
advance from about $8 for anthracite in 1915 to $10, $11, and 
even $12 in 1918. while bituminous went from $5 to $6.50 in the 
same period. Last year bituminous was approximately $2.65 at 
the mine; this year it is $3.10. Now a large percentage of these 
increases represent the increase in labor cost. Whereas the 
miner used to get about 84 cents a ton, he now gets $1.45. 

And, as we have seen, the miner now wants more money 
for a shorter day's work. It is no wonder the consumer is ask- 
ing where this kind of thing is going to stop. In England the 
British government was recently forced to add 6 shillings 
($1.50) to the price of coal, and the financial journals are seri- 
ously discussing whether British industry can survive so heavy 
a burden. 

One anwer, in this country at least, is the development of 
water power. With cheap and plentiful coal the use of steam 
has in many cases supplanted the use of water power, even 
where the latter was available. But with coal expensive and 
scarce it will be obviously to our advantage to develop water 
power wherever possible. Such a development would, we think, 
have a wholesome effect on the miners' organizations, which 
now occupy a strategic position because of the country's de- 
pendence on coal. 

Of almost equal importance is for the country to learn how 
to use coal economically. If the total value of the products 
that have gone up American chimneys in smoke could be com- 
puted the amount would be staggering. A more general use of 
coke and the improvement of methods of coal distillation should 
be conidered in our efforts to effect a saving. 

In the meantime we would suggest that the wise house- 
holder will not delay in putting in his winter's supply of coal. 
The fuel administration has practically relinquished its control 
and it does not seem likely that the benevolent system of dis- 
tribution which prevailed last winter will be continued. 



How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

CHAPTER I. 
WHY YOUR FUEL IS WASTED. 

The purpose of this book is to show WHY, HOW and 
WHERE fuel is wasted in your boiler room. Having shown 
the causes of loss specific means of stopping the wastes will be 
suggested. A diagnosis of the sick man's case will not cure 
him. There must be a prescription following the diagnosis 
and the actual taking of the medicine must follow the pre- 
scription. 

The sickest thing about your factory plant is the boiler 
room. You have been so busy putting the "prod" into 
production that you have allowed the boiler room to look after 
itself in its own way. And the result is exactly what might 
be expected in such circumstances. You are wasting just 
about a quarter of your fuel. When I say "you," I am refer- 
ring to the average steam power plant and when I say "a 
quarter of your fuel" I am referring to the preventable wastes 
that occur in the actual burning of the coal. I am not includ- 
ing the necessary heat losses, which are considerable. I am 
not including the losses chargeable to the boiler proper as 
distinct from the furnace, such as the great waste due to 
scale, improper baffling, etc., or the loss due to soot which 
should be charged jointly to the furnace and boiler. If we add 
these other wastes to the 25 per cent loss that must be charged 
against the fireman and the furnace the total will be a 
staggering figure. I have treated elsewhere* at some length 
of these "other wastes," and we shall be reasonably occupied 
in this book if we do justice to the subject of furnace efficiency 
and allow the boiler for the time being to look after itself. 
Something will be said about soot and scale but with these 
exceptions the book will stick to its title, "How to Build Up 
Furnace Efficiency." 



*See the magazine publications of The System Company, 
Chicago. 

Never read a book until you have read the author's preface. 



16 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



Fuel Wastes Between the Mine and the Machine 

Prevent- Non-pre- 

able veritable 

losses losses 

B. T. U. B. T. U. 
DIRECT FUEL WASTES 

1 Lost — By weather waste between mine 

and factory 290,000 

2 Lost — In handling- at the plant 290,000 

3 Lost — 111 the ash — non-preventable 284,200 

4 Lost — In the ash — preventable 1,136.800 

5 Lost — By radiation — non-preventable 284,200 

6 Lost — By radiation — preventable 852,600 

7 Lost — By incomplete combustion 204,908 

8 Lost — In chimney to maintain draft — 

non-preventable 3,410,400 

9 Lost — On account of air leakage in fur- 

nace and boiler sitting — preventable. . 2,842,000 

LO Lost — On account of air excess drawn 

through grates — preventable 2,842,000 

li Lost— Due to heating moisture in air and 

coal 4 26.300 



Totals 8.168.308 4,695,100 

[NDIRECT FUEL WASTES 
HEAT ENERGY LOSSES 

12 Lost— Due to short circuiting of gases in 

gas passages of boiler 322.732 

13 Lost — One to soot on heating surfaces. .. . 1,126,561 

ii Lost— Due to scale in boiler 1,152,293 

15 Lost — Due to incorrect correlation of load 

to draft 1,116,800 

it; Lost— One to inability <»r boiler to reduce 

temperature of gases below that of the 

steam in boiler 1,280,907 

i. Lost — Due to leakage of water and steam 216,685 

18 Lost Due to friction and radiation in 

steam pipes non-preventable 216,68.") 

] 9 Lost — One to friction and radiation in 

steam pipes— preventable 866,742 

20 Lost— With engine exhaust 7,627,331 

L'l Lost — l'u<- to cylinder condensation and 

radiation 715,063 

22 Lost — In friction at engine — non-prevent- 

able 119,177 

23 Lost- lu friction at engin< — preventable. 59,588 

24 Lost — In transmission from engine to 

machine — non-preventable 231,000 

25 Lost — In transmission from engine to 

machine — preventable 231,000 



Totals 6,107,464 9,475,100 

Grand Totals 14,275,772 14,170,200 

Totals of all losses, preventable and 

non-preventable 28.445,972 B. t .u. 

Delivered to the machine 554,028 B. t. u. 



Received from mine 29,000,000 B. t. u. 

Note. — One ton of coal at the mine is assumed to contain 
29,000,000 British Thermal Units. The items show where the 
losses occur and the relative sizes of same in average boiler and 
engine practice. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



17 




18 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

I use the expression "Build Up" because a really con- 
structive process is involved. There is a place to begin, a 
plan to be pursued and an end to be attained. If you do not 
start in the proper way at the right place you will never have 
efficiency in your boiler room. And after you get efficiency 
if you do not follow the proper method you will not be able 
to keep it. Your plant will "back-slide," if I may borrow that 
term from "Billy" Sunday. I wish to make it very clear that 
it is one thing to "attain" efficiency and quite another thing 
to "maintain" it. 

My statement that a quarter of the coal is needlessly 
wasted in burning may be challenged by some people. I shall 
not take it back; I have data covering hundreds of power 
plants and I can prove it. .It is always dangerous to write 
a statement which on its face appears improbable. However 
reasonable your other statements may be the one that sounds 
extravagant may queer all of them. The reader is asked to 
accept that estimate of 25 per cent as applying to his own 
power plant until he has made the investigations suggested 
in this book and proved to his own satisfaction that his own 
power plant is an exception to the general rule. 

Is one-quarter of your annual coal pile worth saving? 
It is a waste of good paper to print such a fool question. Of 
course it is. Every cent that the big pile of fuel represents 
was skinned from the dividend account. Just figure a moment. 
One thousand dollars thrown away in your boiler room must 
be replaced by another thousand earned from your business. 
That thousand dollars earned means something in volume of 
orders and volume of output. And if your total coal bill is 
only four thousand dollars per annum you are a relatively 
small bore institution. One large factory in Illinois made an 
actual saving of $73,000 the first year that the methods to be 
described in this book were employed in its boiler room and 
that year the plant earned its first profit. 

The big industries of the country have made a discovery. 
They have learned that the profits of the present depend very 

"Kindly turn out the lights when leaving 
the office, we need the current to sell." 

Sign in the offices of the West Penn Rys. 
Co., Connellsville, Pa. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 19 

largely upon the practice of economies and that the profits of 
the future will depend entirely upon such practice. They are 
going after savings in all departments while many of th|} 
smaller manufacturers have yet to learn that there is such % 
word as "economy" in the dictionary. This waking up in tM 
big industries is one of the reasons why big business is as big 
as it is and why the big fellows are eating up the little ones. 
I do not mean to say that all of the big manufacturing indus- 
tries are really economical in the use of fuel. The majority 
are extremely wasteful. I do mean to say that the big enter- 
prise is beginning to scrutinize its coal account and supervise 
its boiler rooms. 

When our battleships made their celebrated trip around 
the world it was discovered by the fleet engineer that certain 
of the vessels were much more wasteful of fuel than others. 
There was nothing like uniformity in the coal consumed per 
knot steamed, even among ships that were almost the exact 
duplicates of each other. There was a difference of 20 per 
cent in the coal consumption of certain sister ships. Here 
was food for thought and the Bureau of Steam Engineering 
began thinking. 

The following is quoted from an article by Lieut. Com- 
mander W. B. Tardy, U. S. N., published in the Engineering 
-Magazine : 

"This recently inaugurated activity has already resulted in 
the installation of pyrometers and gas analysis apparatus on 
board all ships; has caused the building or improving of fire- 
room timing devices; has caused a study of combustion and fir- 
ing problems which has led to a location and elimination of 
nearly all the air leaks in furnaces and boiler settings, the 
determination of the proper amount of coal for a charge at vari- 
ous speeds, the correct firing interval, the correct and normal 
opening of damper and furnace and ash-pan doors when fires 
are not being replenished or worked; has demonstrated the 
saving of fuel possible by manipulating the same and ash-pan 
doors when coal is being fired. 

"On January 1, 1908, the average battleship knots per ton of 
coal fired was 2.88; on July 1, 1910, this average was 3.77 with 
ships 20 per cent larger on the latter date than on the former 
date." 

The battle-ship now steams 31 per cent farther on a ton of 
coal than in 1908. This is equivalent to an actual fuel saving 
of about 24 per cent as an average for all ships. The improve- 
ment on some of the ships must have been far in excess bi 
these figures. 



20 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

I might go on indefinitely with these illustrations showing 
what it is possible to do and what is actually being done to 
decrease the primary cost of power. Some of the smaller 
plants furnish illustrations even more remarkable than those 
offered by the big ones. 

In a small Ohio town there are two small factories. 
They manufacture the same kind of product. The larger of 
the two plants burns one ton of coal per day and the smaller 
Amrns seven. In a Southern city there are two ice plants. 
One gets three tons of ice from a ton of coal and the other 
gets ten tons. The ten ton man is getting rich and buying 
more ice plants. Some day he will buy the piddling three ton 
plant and put it on a ten ton basis. 

Power is the largest single item of expense in most manu- 
facturing industries and fuel represents about 70 per cent of 
the total cost of power. And the price of fuel is going up. 
Nothing short of the discovery of a new source of power can 
stop the rising tendency of coal prices. You face the grim 
facts of sharp and merciless competition and of increasing 
fuel costs. The alarm clocks are going off in other establish- 
ments and it is time for you to wake up. If you sleep too 
long, waking up won't help you. The other man will be so 
far ahead in the race that you can never overtake him. 

I have been all over the United States and Canada since 
the European war started, and I now tell you that a move- 
ment toward efficiency has started in America and is gaining 
recruits every hour. This movement has gone clear through 
certain lines of industry. It has not made its appearance at 
all in other lines. What about the industry in which you are 
engaged, and in particular what about YOU? "Don't wait 
to tune your fiddle until the concert has started."* 

Let us hope that American initiative, coupled with the 
movement for efficiency that has been started in this country, 
will pull us through the terrific struggle with the Germanized 
industrial and business forces which the prophets say will 
soon be arrayed against us. 

Much just criticism has been leveled against the present 
propaganda of "scientific management." There is, in fact, a 



*Harvey Grant. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



21 



COAL PRODUCTION AND POPULATION INCREASE COMPARED 



















500t 






I 

J 


























DO 
<0 


























o 


























J 


























S 


























N 


























■ 


















Z 
In 


























h 








^^ 
















169 


























r 


1 








i ■ 
















1° 










■i 1 1 
















J 
J 










i_iii 


























iii 














157 


r 








(/ 
I 


liTll 
























c 






















— ir 


C 
c 

— 

1 


l 

ll 

II 
ll 
hi 


















in , 












70. 




CM 
ft* 


fir* 




a 

_cc 

c 
oc 








ro- 
OJ ^ 

r 












sj 


a>_ 


N 






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C 




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-f 


r l4 










n 



S 00r>0 00r->°00 2 OO 

« ^ in ^ n « ^o-JQvoi^oooio 
5 og oo oo oo a> oo £> m <» oo ao cc oo c> 

Chart showing - why the cost of coal has risen and will 
continue to rise. 

Every time a baby is born, the price of coal goes up, 



Z 

o 

_J 
:> 

LL 

o 

CL 

LL 
O 

£ 

< 

u 

a 



o 
o 



32 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




What you pay for coal. 





What you pay for wages, re- What you pay for wages, re- 
pairs and incidentals in pairs, supplies, etc., in the 
the boiler room. engine room. 



It's your money. "I should bibble ! 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 23 

lot of "fish" in much of the efliciency talk and a great deal 
of "con" in much of the economy talk, especially where the 
"efficiency" and "economy" men have something to sell in the 
way of service or apparatus. The quacks, and extremists are 
hurting this movement as they have hurt all others. And yet, 
nowithstanding the "fish" and the "con" of it, "scientific man- 
agement" in its real and its broad sense is the most important 
industrial fact of the present century. One proof of this is 
that both big and little business are going in for it. "Scien- 
tific management" means more than "motion studies" and the 
speeding up of workmen. It means anything and everything 
that tends to make a dollar's worth of material, of time or of 
effort yield more results than it ever yielded before. A real 
revolution is in progress and it is good to be a participator in it. 

There was a time when the manufacturers of this country 
were not interested to any degree in the subject of economy. 
Things were too new. Industrial development was too rapid. 
Competition was not intense. The material resources of our 
country seemed inexhaustible. We stupidly blundered on 
while all around us waste of every description held royal 
carnival. The soil was half cultivated and less than half 
cared for. Our great forests of splendid pine were ruthlessly 
destroyed. The sky was red with flaming gas wells in Indiana 
and Ohio. No one seemed to think that our rich soil would 
ever become impoverished; that the time might arrive when 
we could not live in wooden houses because there would be 
no suitable wood with which to build them; that our great 
stores of natural gas would ever become exhausted. We went 
blindly forward from year to year, wasting enough to feed 
and clothe half of Europe. The time has come to pay the piper 
and it is a mighty long bill that the gentleman is presenting. 

I have referred to the general trend of the present 
efficiency movement because of its compelling importance and 
in order that what is to follow in this book may gain some 
emphasis. 

Why is it that so much of your fuel is wasted? If that 
question cannot be answered we might as well ring oft and 
hang up because all of our efforts will be useless. 

Let us suppose that I visit your factory plant tomorrow. 



24 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



I call upon the manager and he receives me courteously.! I 
tell him that a quarter of his fuel is being wasted and he 
admits it. He is "busy" and he passes me along to the super- 
intendent. That individuaL is "busy" also. He is worrying 
about the delivery on some big order. He sends me to the 
engineer and I know from his actions that he was glad to get 
rid of me. 

I find the engineer with a Stillson wrench in one hand 
and a pair of pliers in the other. He is the "wet nurse" to 



Ihe c?j^qine<?r wthe wet nurse to 
e vQrykJ^yp&jzc tri cal a.j\d mcchajnic&l 

";"- ' &42cti+ the p!$nt. 




: ^_ 



&p^S^ 



everything electrical and mechanical about the plant. He 
"hasn't time" to supervise the boiler room. He is too busy 
supervising the apparatus that the boiler room serves to pay 
any attention to the thing that is doing the serving. Of course 
they waste coal in the boiler room, but look at the "dagoes" 
and "niggers" that they are forced to employ as firemen. The 
manager is satisfied with that kind of service. The "old man" 
comes to the surface once a month and blows like a whale 
about the coal bill. Aside from this monthly disturbance, all 
is quiet along the Potomac. Our conversation is cut short by 
the engineer's telephone and I go to the boiler room. I tell 
the fireman that he is burning too much coal and he indig- 
nantly denies it. He has been firing boilers for twenty years 
and says he knows his business. But would I just look at the 
stuff the coal dealer is delivering? 

I don't know who invented the game of "passing the buck," 
but I do know who plays it. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 25 

And so I go to the coal dealer and- ask him about it. He 
tells me that he is delivering the very grade of fuel called for 
in his contract, that it is good fuel and the plant has no kick 
coming. And thus I make the complete circuit of your estab- 
lishment, like a kitten chasing its tail. I have made that 
circuit of power plants so many times that I am getting dizzy. 
Everybody lays it on the dog and nobody wants to be the goat. 
And that is "WHY YOUR FUEL IS WASTED." 

A reform is necessary in your boiler room and in order to 
initiate it there must be an initiator. Absolutely nothing can 
be hoped for until somebody starts something. 

I was talking some time ago with a consulting engineer 
in the city of Philadelphia. He said: "I get plenty of work, 
charge high fees, and suppose I ought to be satisfied; but I 
don't like my business. The manager of a power plant, in a 
fit of reform, employs me to make an investigation. I make 
a lot of recommendations, most of which if carried out would 
involve the expenditure of very little money. My bill is paid 
promptly and I call again in a month to see how the plant 
is coming on. Not one thing that I have recommended has 
been done or ever will be done. I like to see my clients get 
some benefit from my services, but in only about one job out of 
five are my recommendations actually carried out."* 

Every consulting engineer in the country who has recom- 
mended improvements in the power departments of factory 
plants wi!l»appreciate the viewpoint of the Philadelphia man. 

Some one is primarily responsible for the fuel wastes in 
your boiler room. Let us proceed by a process of elimination 
and see if we can find the guilty man. We will start with 
the fireman. 

What was he hired for? To make steam, of course. 
There is nothing in your contract with the fireman that 
specifies anything about making steam with efficiency. One 
fireman will burn a lot of coal and make a little steam. 
Another will burn a little coal and make a lot of steam. 
There is that difference in firemen and you know it. What 
method have you of differentiating between your firemen and 
comparing the efficiency of one man with that of another? 

*"He who washes a donkey's head wastes his soap." 



26 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

What steps do you take to insure that every fireman is an 
efficient fireman? Not a single step. You demand STEAM 
and you take efficiency like a tapeworm takes it dinner — just 
as it is handed to you. 

Your fireman knows that if he does not supply enough 
steam he will hear from headquarters. He knows further, 
that as long as he does supply enough steam, nobody will 
come near him to disturb him. What the steam that he fur- 
nishes may cost you does not concern him. Why should it 
concern him? If you are satisfied to pay the coal bills why 
should he worry about them? It is your coal and your money. 
Now, as a matter of fact, your fireman believes that he is an 
efficient operative. He even takes a little pride in the skill 
that he thinks he possesses. But he measures his efficiency 
by his ability to keep the arrow of the steam gage pointing at 
100 pounds. He does not think of steam in terms of coal. He 
does not think of coal in terms of money. He places coal in 
the same category with clinkers and ashes. It is just so much 
heavy stuff to be handled in the course of the day's work. 
And what other concept can you expect the fireman to have 
of your fuel pilo".' As fast as one pile of coal is burned another 
automatically takes its place. The coal is always there and 
the fireman is given a shovel and "carte blanche" to help 
himself to it. 

We cannot blame the fireman for this quarter of your coal 
that he is wasting. We absolve him absolutely. He does the 
best he knows how and his performance is as good as the 
teaching he received. By the way, who taught your fireman 9 
Some other fireman, of course. Who taught the other fellow? 
And there you are. And there you will remain with your 25 
per cent fuel waste until somebody shows your fireman that 
it is less work to shovel three tons of coal than it is to shovel 
tour; that his labor will be reduced as his efficiency is 
increased, and that if he would work his muscles less he must 
work his head more. Most firemen are afflicted with the 
hookworm and the sleeping sickness. "Do the minimum of 
work in the maximum of time and God bless pay day." This 
is the fireman's creed and for that matter it is the creed of 
almost everybody. It is human nature's creed, and if you 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted, 27 

want efficiency anywhere you must learn how to deal with 
human nature. Human nature knows exactly how to deal 
with you. 

In the last chapter of this book I shall tell you about 
methods that have been successfully used to convert the very 
lowest grades of men into expert firemen. I must not be 
understood to mean that a fireman is necessarily a low grade 
man. It is well to remember that a man's real status is not 
fixed by his environment or occupation. I respect firemen. 
I have taken my turn at the boiler furnace and I am not 
ashamed of it. On the contrary, I am proud of it. I know 
the fireman's point of view to a red hair and I know firemen. 
There are good men among them. They will listen to any 
man if they are convinced that his experience in the boiler 
room is broader than their own. It doesn't require much 
prophetic vision to do this bit of accurate prophesying: The 
time will come when men will graduate from the engine 
room to the boiler room instead of the other way around as 
at present, when watch firemen will receive better pay than 
watch engineers and when the highest salaried man in the 
entire power department will be the boiler room superin- 
tendent. That time has already arrived in some power plants. 
They have seen the universal mistake in arranging the per- 



Cau 




The wrong end of the horse. 



28 



Hoiv to Build Uy Furnace Efficiency. 



sonnel of the power force <md they are now hitching up the 
cart to the right end of tin ; norse. 

Let us now proceed t t determine the guilt or innocence 
of the engineer as respect: i your 25 per cent fuel loss. 

An engineer is a man who is paid a mighty little for 
doing a mighty lot and sometimes earns less than his salary. 
The chances are that he rose from the position of oiler and 
never served an apprenticeship in the boiler room. When he 
learned engineering it was not considered necessary that an 
engineer should know anything about combustion. In those 
days the theory of combustion was left to the college profes- 
sors and the practice of it to the firemen's union. The 
engineer now complains that he has little opportunity to post 
up on either the theory or the practice. He might find time 
for a little study on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but he is 
busy at the plant on those festive occasions, supervising 

~7T~~^d P ** \> f, \ % \ W j~ — -— - -~^_ 

Oh' for a thou 5 and tongues to Sing" 



Bodg^sti t to H a l/f ^y 1 m&shed my thumb 




On Sundays he worships wirh. k^- 

h is Wad inside an open 
engine cylinder 
emergency repairs. On Sundays he worships with his head 
inside an opened engine cylinder. I have known an engineer 
to do a 72-hour stunt in a power plant without a wink of sleep, 
a word of complaint or a whisper of commendation. Such 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



29 



THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE THEORY OP COMBUSTION 
WAS LEFT TO THE COLLEGE PROFESSORS AND THE 
PRACTICE OP IT TO THE MEN IN THE BOILER ROOM. THE 
ENGINEER AND MANAGER DID NOT WORRY THEMSELVES 
WITH EITHER THE THEORY OR THE PRACTICE. 




THE THEORY OF COMBUSTION WAS LEFT 
TO THE COLLEGE PROFESSORS. 



THE "FACULTY OF THEORY. 




"Boys, it's your business to keep up steam. 
There's the coal pile. Go to it." 

THE "FACULTY" OF PRACTICE. 



30 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

t 

things are not unusual. They are expected of engineers when 
the emergency arises and are expected by them. They are a 
part of the price that a man must pay for the privilege of 
being an engineer. I have said that I respect firemen. I 
respect engineers also, and I have a great many warm friends 
among them, but I cannot absolve the engineer for that 25 
per cent fuel loss as I absolve the fireman. 

Now, Mr. Engineer, please stand and be sworn! If you 
want what is going, you must take what is coming: 

THE ENGINEER'S CATECHISM. 
1. What is the efficiency of your boiler furnaces? 
- 2. What draft in your boiler furnaces will carry your 
load and burn the least coal? 

3. Have you calibrated your boiler dampers and the main 
breeching damper? 

4. Have you equalized the draft among the boilers? 

5. How much air is leaking through your boiler settings? 

6. When is an air leak an aid to efficiency? 

7. Where are the air leaks that are injuring efficiency? 

8. How much too much air are your firemen permitting 
to flow through the fuel bed? 

9. Do your firemen admit more air than is necessary at 
the furnace, either above or below the fire? 

10. How much excess air from all sources are you heating 
and sending up the chimney? 

11. How thick should the particular coal you are burning 
be carried on the particular grates you are using? 

12. Are you using the coal best adapted to your condi- 
tions? 

13. Are you using the grate best adapted to your condi- 
tions? 

14. Should the coal you are using be fired dry or wet for 
greatest economy? 

15. Is the grate surface just right for the highest 
economy? 

16. How much and what kind of combustible is passing 
up your chimney? 

17. What are the specific causes of the smoke you are 
making? 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 31 

18. Is the low evaporation of which you complain, due to 
the boiler, the furnace, the coal or the fireman? 

19. If you don't know why the evaporation is low, how 
in the name of Pluto will you proceed to increase the evapo- 
ration ? 

20. How much coal is your poor fireman wasting and how 
much more can your best fireman save? 

21. Will you state, under oath, that the boiler headers 
are ALWAYS properly packed and the setting and baffling 
ALWAYS in proper condition before your boilers are put 
into service? 

22. Aren't you ashamed of yourself if you are unable to 
answer all of the foregoing questions? 

Now, Mr. Engineer, tell me candidly as man to man: Does 
not every one of those questions have a vital bearing on your 
employer's coal bill? If such is the case, does not your duty 
to your employer and your status as an engineer require that 
you find the answers to those questions if you have not already 
found them? And should not every engineer who claims to 
have passed the kindergarten department of power practice be 
able to answer them? And didn't the Creator waste a lot of 
good mud in making an engineer who cannot answer them? 
And if you cannot answer those questions how will you feel 
when the boss gets a copy of this book and springs the 
"catechism" on you? 

Every engineer might be a qualified combustion man. 
Combustion engineering, as I shall try to show, consists in the 
application of ordinary horse sense to the every-day prob- 
lems of fuel burning. Any man with a fair understanding of 
boilers and furnaces and with a real desire to learn what 
constitutes economical combustion can qualify in a very short 
time as a practical combustion engineer. To acquire the 
theory of the subject would of course take some time longer. 
In the last year I have traveled over a large section of the 
United States and Canada. I have talked with hundreds of 
engineers and have been present at the meetings of many 

If you don't know Combustion, you haven't learned the 
alphabet of steam engineering. 



32 



Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



engineers' associations. Combustion is considered everywhere 
the very livest subject that can be .mentioned. I quote the 
exact language of one engineer: "The time has come when 
the steam engineer must interest himself in combustion, 
otherwise engineering will not interest itself in him." 



THE ALPHABET OF STEAM ENGINEERING. 

(Contributed to POWER by the Author and reprinted here with 
. the customary apologies.) 




A stands for AMBITION to reach the top quick, 

Where the pickers are few and the prizes hang thick. 
B stands for BOILER. You put water in it. 

And if you don't watch there'll be scale in a minute. 
C stands for COMBUSTION. To start it you scratch 

On the seat of your pants with a Lucifer match. 
D stands for DOLLARS and also for DOUGH. 

You can earn quite a lot when your business you know. 
E stands for EFFICIENT, a term that I wot 

Is used verv gliblv by some who are not. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



K 



M 



F stands for FURNACE and FIREMAN, too; 

When they both tend to business the coal man looks blue. 
G- stands for GASES that go up the flue. 

Look out or you'll waste a heat unit or two. 
H stands for the HOLES that let air through the fire. 

You must watch for such air holes; with waste they 

conspire. 
I stands for INTENTION to stop up the leaks; 

You can do it today. Why defer it for weeks? 
J stands for the JOY that the manager fills 

When the month's balance sheet shows some small fuel 

bills. 

stands for the KNOWLEDGE that some engineers 

Acquire quite quickly while others take years. 

stands for the LIGHTS that in dark corners gleam 

When the chief engineer knows the cost of the steam. 

stands for the MOMENT to stop fuel waste ; 

The moment is Now and the password is "Haste." 
N stands for the NOTION at one time supreme 

That the plant was all right when it made enough steam. 
O stands for OXYGEN; wide is its use. 

"Oxy" means "acid" and "gen" means "produce." 
P stands for POWER. It comes from a press, 

And sometimes from a Corliss or turbine, I guess. 
Q stands for the thing that they call QUESTIONNAIRE. 

You fill out the blanks and then put up a prayer. 
R stands for REPAIRS which you ought in all reason 

Get out of the way in the slack summer season. 
S stands for the STEAM you waste coal to produce 

And you waste the same steam when you put it to use. 
T stands for TURBINE. Our friend Jamie Watt 

Would gasp could he see us shoot steam through a pot. 
U stands for UPTAKE. For a sample of gas 

For your Orsat, avoid it, and use the last pass. 
V stands for the thing that we often call VIM. 

Without it you sink. When you have it you swim. 
W stands for WATER. Beginning this year 

We all have to drink it and play it is beer. 
X stands for XPERT and XPERIENCE, too. 



34 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

When you've gathered the second the first becomes you. 
Y stands for the jaw-breaker YOUGHIOGHENY, 

It's a kind of coal out in West Pennsylvany. 
Z stands for ZEST for the work we are in, 

And with Zest comes Success. NOW LET'S GO IN AND 

WIN ' 

You can begin to qualify" by commencing to study the ■ 
toiler plant now in your charge. I know you are busy, but 
tomorrow you will be busier. There is only one way to do it. 
Wake up and get up. Gird up your loins, and go to it. Better 
watch that fellow in the boiler room, because he is studying 
fuel economy and he may be slated to get your job. I call 
tr mind two engineers who lived in our town. One man was 
always climbing up, the other slipping down. The climber 
started at the foot like Schwab and other winners. The man 
who wants to reach the top must start with the beginners. 
They gave him hard and dirty work — they kept him on the 
jump. He wheeled in coal and then he wheeled the ashes to 
the dump. He plugged along from day to day; he didn't kick 
or shirk. They found at last the fellow had some interest in 
his work. And so they moved him up a notch and hired a 
husky toiler to push the creaking barrow while the climber 
fired the boiler. The work was heavy, hard and hot; he never 
seemed to mind it. "There's some best way to do this stunt,- by 
iinks," he said. "I'll find it. There's some best way to burn 
this coal and manage drafts and fires. I'll find that way and 
then I'll do just what this job requires." I need not tell in 
detail how this climber clambered higher. He learned each 
new job in its turn the way he learned to fire the furnace in 
that boiler room. They could not keep him down and pretty 
soon a man's size job had called him from our town. The 
city field that beckoned found him ready to deliver and now 
he's rich and sails his yacht and owns and drives a flivver. 
The man who mixes thought with work — just get this through 
your noodle — will rise at last to run the ranch and boss the 
whole caboodle. 

It hurts my kindly heart to write about the other guy. He 
had a pull or something and he started rather high, where pay 
was good and work was light; he might have risen higher but 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



35 



he lacked the stuff that makes success — he lacked ambition's 
fire. And while the climber toiled and thought, then studied 
like the dickens, the other shirked and wished for night, the 
bright lights and the chickens. The man who stops to watch 
the clock or listen for the whistle may dine on porterhouse 
today — some day he'll dine on gristle. Some men are paid for 
what they do and some for what they know. The head is 
greater than the hands; this always will be so. It doesn't cut 




NOW HE'S PUNCHING HOLES IN DOUGHNUTS. 



06 Ho w to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

a bit of ice, how high you're elevated, or what your pull, the 
skids are there and always lubricated. So while the climber 
clambered toward the higher jobs and got'em, the other fellow 
on the skids was headed for the bottom and reached it in no 
time at all — in less than nothing flat. Now he's punching 
holes in doughnuts — and he isn't fit for that. 

Just one thing more, before I talk to the General Manager. 
If you wish to institute any reforms in your boiler room, to 
make any repairs, to purchase any apparatus or to do any- 
thing else for the improvement of efficiency that will require 
the consent of the Manager, go to him like a man and state 
your case like one. Don't be afraid of the Manager. He won't 
bite you. If you come to talk business he will take the time 
to talk business with you. If he wasn't that kind of a man 
he wouldn't be Manager. And he wants an engineer who 
knows what the plant needs and who has the intestines to ask 
for it when he wants it. Certain of the Power journals have 
been discussing the "timidity" of the engineer and in the 
opinion of the editors the reason why many steam plants fail 
to progress is because the Chief Engineer is afraid of the 
Manager. 

And now, Mr. Manager, to what extent are you indi- 
vidually blamable for the waste of fuel in your boiler room 9 
When I use the term "Manager" I refer to the executive who 
is the court of last resort on every important question relating 
to the power department. His official title may be something 
else. The man I am after is the man highest up who has any- 
thing to do with the power department and for purposes of 
identification we will call him the "Manager." 

I have talked with your firemen and with your engineer 
about the waste in your boiler room and I have obtained 
very little satisfaction. The waste will continue until some- 
body starts something. My notion of a "Manager" is that 
it is part of his business to manage. When a reform is 
called for, he should either originate it or see that somebody 
else does some originating. The waste in your boiler room 
can be stopped by an order, an edict, an irade or whatever it 
is that you issue when you want action. If your patience will 
permit a reading of this book to a finish I shall try to make 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



37 



good my strange claim that fuel wastes can actually be 
stopped by the fiat of the Manager. If you are in love with 
these wastes they will certainly continue. If you are not in 
love with them but keep mum about them they will just as 
certainly continue. 




Every morning your firemen are handed a roll of money 
in the form of coal. You do not even count it when you hand 
it to them. You permit them to spend it according to their 
own fancy. You require no accounting from them. This is 
better treatment than you accord your wife. When Madam 
gets her allowance you know to a nickel how much you have 
handed her. She has to stretch it and get along with it or 
get up in the silent watches of the night and go through your 
trousers. Did you ever put a scoop shovel in her hands and 
turn her loose on your pile of bullion? 



38 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

Treat the other departments of your factory plant with 
the same fine consideration that you show your boiler room 
and the sheriff will turn up in a short time with a placard 
and a tack hammer. 

Every business day in the year a clerk from your office is 
sent to the bank to deposit the garnerings of your business. 
What would you do to that clerk if he should lose as many 
dollars each day on his way to the bank as you know your 
firemen waste each day in burning your fuel? If he lost a 
quarter of a dollar a day you would be furious about it. And 
yet you can talk of the waste of many dollars a day in your 
boiler room and be complacent about it. You reverse the 
telescope when you look at the boiler room and this makes 
everything down there look very small and very far away 
from you. 

The money that your careless clerk loses on the way to 
the bank is not lost utterly. Somebody will find it and it may 
be returned to you. If not returned it may serve to buy food 
and clothing for some suffering family. But the fuel that your 
fireman wastes is lost forever. It is gone absolutely without 
hope of recovery. Needless fuel waste can be properly classi- 
fied as an economic crime, because it reduces our national 
resources and this in its turn affects everybody. When we 
apply that 25 per cent factor of needless fuel loss to the half 
billion tons of coal consumed in the United States annually, 
we have a conservation proposition of national importance. 

A Chicago fireman was caught, several years ago, selling 
a few hods of coal from the bunkers of the boiler room in 
which he was employed. The weather was cold and the stoves 
in the Ghetto were hungry. His employer was justly indig- 
nant and the fireman was sent to the Bridewell. A few 
months later this same employer was shown by a firm of fuel 
engineers, how and why his other firemen were needlessly 
wasting more than 30 per cent of his fuel. He was "not 
interested." The loss itself concerned him less than the man- 
ner of the losing. 

It is difficult to understand the average plant Manager's 
point of view as respects fuel economy. He regards his coal 
bill as a necessary evil and he considers preventable fuel 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted, 



39 



waste as an organic disease, peculiar to the industry in which 
he is engaged — a trouble that must be endured because he 
thinks it cannot be cured. And so in many cases it is impos r 
sible to interest him. He will tell you that he is not a» 
engineer, that he cannot hope to understand engineering prob- 
lems and that all such matters are left to his engineering 
department. But if you will go and talk with the engineering 
department you will find that he does not leave such matters 
in its hands. The Chief Engineer knows from experience 
about what his chances are when he asks for money for plant 
improvements. He must wait for the psychological moment 
to arrive before he makes his requisition. He must get on the 
leeward side of the Manager and stalk him. like a hunter 
stalks a lion. If he makes his approach at the wrong time or 
from the wrong direction his requisition will not be honored. 
A Manager recently said to me: "It will be necessary for 
you to discuss that subject with our Chief Engineer. We 
leave all such matters to him." "Leaves all such matters to 
me, does he?" said the Chief. "In a pig's eye he does. If he 
only did leave them to me there would be something doing 
Last week I went at the office with a requisition for a feed 
water thermometer. I was turned down. The old man said, 
we must 'economize.' I told him that was what I wanted ip 
do and why I wanted the thermometer. I tried to explain 
that every ten degrees add^d to the temperature of the feed 




40 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

water meant a saving of one per cent in fuel and what do you 
think he said to me? He asked me if the thermometer would 
make the feed water any hotter. I told him that I couldn't 
heat water with a thermometer, but that the thermometer 
would tell me where in thunder I was 'at,' that at present the 
only means I had of judging the feed water was by feeling the 
pipes. Did I get that $4 thermomter? I did not; and now I 
don't care what the temperature of the feed water is. I 
wouldn't turn my hand if the boilers were taking ice water." 

Of course, the engineer took the wrong position in the 
matter. If he could not get the co-operation of the Manager 
in securing economy he should have taken all of the economy 
he could get without co-operation. But he took the natural 
position and one that I find a good sized percentage of the 
engineers in steam power plants are taking. 

If we must condemn the attitude of. the engineer, how 
much more must we condemn the attitude of the Manager in 
that instance. When you expect something for nothing you 
are sure to get nothing for something. If you want efficiency 
you must provide the means of producing efficiency. Pharaoh* 
thought he could get bricks without furnishing straw and he 
fell down on the proposition. This happened 3,405 years ago, 
according to the chronology of Archbishop Usher, and yet in 
these late days and these enlightened times there are men who 
believe that they can put it over. The children of Israel 
did scratch around and produce a -certain amount of straw, but 
it was expensive straw for Pharoah. And a lot of engineers 
have gone down into their own socks for the money with 
which to purchase needed testing apparatus. Go and ask the 
manufacturers of steam engine "Indicators" about it. They 
will tell you that the Indicator worked its way into the power 
plant through the lean pocketbooks of operating engineers. 
Today the Indicator is considered a prime necessity in power 
plant practice and the plants themselves are actually buying 
them. Go and ask the manufacturers of Flue Gas Analyzers 
about it. They will tell you that a large percentage of their 
orders comes direct from the engineers of steam plants who 

An old fool who resided in Egypt soma years ago. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



41 



are scrimping to buy the apparatus and who are paying for it 
in pitiful monthly installments. 




A T.OT OF ENGIKESRS HAVE GONE DOWN INTO 
THEIR ON SOCKS. 

You remember, Mr. Manager, the time that your engineer 
came to your office, cap in hand, and asked you to buy some- 
thing that he needed to improve the efficiency of the boiler 
room. You turned him down rather gruffly and he proceeded 
to "beat it." You haven't seen him since and he is not likely 
to bother you again. Nice encouragement, that, for an em- 
ployee who felt that he was risking his job in asking you to 
spend a few dollars in your own interests. I am sure you 
would have respected him more had he stood his ground like 
a man and demanded the thing that his judgment told him he 
needed. I am not your employee and I am not the least bit 
afraid of you — hence I am shoving these few facts right down 



42 Hoic to Build Up Furnace Efficieyicy. 



your throat into your gizzard. Some day the Directors of 
your company will ask to see the coal bills. 

THAT AWFUL, MOMENT WHE\ 




The l-reswuent of the coarci iisks the Managing Executive to 
explain why the dividends are so emaciated and the coal bills 
so plump. 

I do not mean, of course, that you should buy every fool 
thing that the power department asks for and that is guar- 
anteed to improve efficiency. Murder! No. That would be 
as reprehensible as your present practice of buying nothing. 
You have bought too much stuff in the past that proved to be 
junk and that is one thing that ails you. You now class 
everything that is offered in the junk category. For example, 
when the smoke inspector was after you, you afflicted your 
boilers with patented steam jets at a cost of about $200 apiece. 
You didn't know that these devices were condemned by 
engineering authorities nearly 50 years ago. And when the 
steam jets failed, you paid another man about $200 per boiler 
to surround your fire boxes with air ducts. You didn't know 
that the air ducts were tried and found guilty before steam jets 
were invented. You didn't know that more than 1,700 patents 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



43 



have issued from the United States Patent Office, covering- 
steam jets, air ducts and other fake furnace contrivances, all 
of which violate the basic requirements of economical combus- 
tion. You have regarded combustion as a mystery and you 
have neglected to inform yourself. Hence you have bitten at 
the fakes and been bitten by the fakers. Hence you place the 
good things that you ought to buy in the same category with 
the bad things you have purchased. In the later chapters of 
this book I shall try to show you what a marvelously simple 
thing it is to secure economical combustion. I shall give you 
the data that will enable you to choose among the host of 
things, good, bad and indifferent, that are offered for the use 
of your boiler room. And the next time that you are asked 
by your engineer to buy something for power plant better- 
ment, don't dismiss him, but make him come across and show 
exactly how and why the thing that he wants is going to 
improve conditions. If he can't show you and prove his 




Manager Mutt: Jeff, this salesman tells me that if we will 
buv a barrel of his boiler compound we will save half of our 
eoal. 

Engineer Jeff: Say, Mutt, let's buy two barrels and save 
all of the coal. 



44 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

case, don't buy it. If he does show you and you don't pur- 
chase, give him a mighty good reason for your refusal and 
ask him to come again whenever he has a suggestion to offer. 
Give your power department the same business treatment 
that you give every other department.* 

A little knowledge of combustion and a little more interest 
in your power plant will enable you to make a discriminating 
choice before you make a purchase. There are many meri- 
torious specialties on the market. You could and should use 
some of them because they will make it possible for your men 
to reduce your fuel bills. When the salesman calls, give him 
a hearing. You may get some valuable ideas even if you do 
not buy. Don't "saw the salesman off" on the purchasing 
agent. I know you dislike salesmen because they take up 
your time. I dislike them myself. When I have to sit and 
listen to a windy salesman's jabber, my milk of human kind- 
ness turns to hard and sour clabber. The salesmen wait for 
me at night, they lay for me at morn. I know they will be on 
my trail when Gabriel blows his horn. I sat before my fire 
one night to take my evening nap. A salesman jimmied up 
the sash and started with his yap. Then when I'd got my 
nightie on, my "Now-1-L.ay-Me" said, I found another sales- 
man hiding underneath my bed. I tried to kill a salesman 
once; I broke his head and slats; I threw him on a garbage 
pile to feed the dogs and cats. Next day I had an awful 
shock; my eyes popped from my head; the salesman on the 
garbage pile had risen from the dead. He stayed and talked 
and talked and stayed and used up all my day. At last I 
bought his worthless junk — there was no other way. There is 
no joy in life for me — no rest where'er I go. Some salesman's 
always butting in. This world's a vale of woe. And when 
at last I shuffle off and hike for Peter's gate, I'll find some 
salesman waiting for me there as sure as fate. And if I give 
the scamp the slip and get inside the wall, he'll steal St. 
Peter's golden keys and catch me after all. And when I have 
my ticket changed for Satan's hot domain, the gang will all 
come after me — they'll all be on my train. And I'll land those 
salesmen in the pit — I'll get them, every pup — and then I'll 



*"Suo sibi gladio hunc jugulo." Terence. 



Why Y our Fuel Is Wasted. 



45 



hire a thousand imps to fire the furnace up. And when-one 
tries to scramble out, he'll find me standing by, armed with a 
red-hot pitch-fork and I'll jab him in the eye. 

A short time ago I called by appointment to see the Man- 
ager of an Eastern factory. We were to discuss the subject 
of his fuel losses and how to stop them. He broke the ap- 
pointment to go to the golf links, but he was kind enough 
to leave a note of apology. I shall not call to see that man 
again. He can take his 25 per cent fuel loss or whatever his 
loss may be and MawM^™™™^ * 





M- 



"Good night! Our coal con- 
sumption is going- np and our 
factory output is going 
down." 



"Now I wonder what in 
thunder the trouble is? Guess 
I'll go down to the CLiUB." 




(Pictures stolen from Briggs) 
And you discuss the enormously important subject of Golf 
with the other club members. 

The captain is responsible for his ship and is held ac- 
ountable for everything and everybody upon it. You are 



*Expunged by the Censor. 



46 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

the captain of an industrial craft and you ought to sit up and 
take notice when the men of your command, heedlessly, care- 
lessly and boneheadedly throw away your stockholders' money. 
If you evince no interest in fuel economy you can't expect 
your firemen and engineers to sit up nights and worry about 
it. They are not stockholders in your institution. Interest 
will not originate in the boiler room. The higher up that 
interest starts the better. It will go down by force of gravity 
and stir up everybody below its point of origin. If you main- 
tain your sphinx-like attitude on the subject of fuel waste, 
your plant will never enjoy the benefits of the most econom- 
ical steam production because there will not be any such 
benefits to enjoy. 

The whole problem of getting efficiency in a steam power 
plant is the problem of waking up the "big boss." 

And so, Mr. Manager, when we submit this question of 
WHY YOUR FUEL IS WASTED to fractional distillation and 
ultimate analysis, we find that you yourself are primarily 
responsible for all of the trouble. We are forced to condemn 
you without benefit of clergy. You are the "nigger in the 
wood-pile," the "woman in the case," the "casus belli" and the 
"primordial germ" of all of the fuel wastes in your boiler 
room. If you don't take a stand for economy we might as 
well throw up the sponge and all the rest of the groceries. If 
we can get you started and keep you going we can inoculate 
everything on two legs around your factory with the germs of 
economy and the anti-toxins of waste. We can even make the 
girls in the office remember to turn out the electric lights 
when they are not needed. We can go to the very limit in 
everything that affects the cost of heat, light and power. We 
can't do a blamed thing if you won't back us and help us. 
You are in a position to say that the things which should be 
done, must be done. If your engineer is incompetent or 
remiss in his duties, put him on the toboggan slide and get 
another one. And the next time that you hire a chief engineer 
look at his head before you look at his hands. If he is short a 
few fingers it doesn't matter, but if he is short in the noddle 
you don't want him. If he doesn't know how to stop fuel 
wastes you can't afford him. 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



47 




Don't fly oft: the track, Mr. Manager, and blow up the 
Engineer or the Fireman because you are burning too much 
coal. "People who live in glass houses should keep their 
clothes on." 

And now, Mr. Manager, Mr. Superintendent, Mr. Chief 
Engineer and Mr. Fireman, I wish to impress upon you, if I 
can, that fuel waste is a crime for which there should be some 
adequate punishment. It is a crime because when you waste 
fuel you are using some of our natural resources that belong- 
to future generations. And when you waste it you are putting 
up the price of my fuel, You have no right to do that and I 
cannot afford it. 

Fuel waste in the time of the great war was worse than 
a .crime; it was treason because it gave a great deal of aid 



48 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




and comfort to our German enemies. The Kaiser would have 
decorated you with iron crosses as big as dish-pans if he 
could have gotten them through the Western lines. 

You treasonably wasted 150,000,000 tons of coal in 1917. 
This was worth more to the Kaiser's cause than a million 
German bayonets. 




It interfered with the manufacture and transportation of 
munitions. But for the very prompt and effective action of 
our government through the National Fuel Administration it 
might have resulted in the triumph of German arms. 

Anarchy under the name of "Bolshevism" is now threat- 
ening to overturn what is left to us of civilization. The cure 
for "Bolshevism" is a reduction in the cost of living. Stop 
wasting fuel and the price of fuel will come down. With 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



49 



falling fuel prices the cost of living will come down. These 
propositions must be evident to every thinking man. 

And now, having blackguarded everybody to my heart's 
content, let us get down to the brass carpet tacks of the fur- 
nace efficiency question. In the next four chapters I shall try 
to hold up each individual item of fuel waste and visualize it 
so that you can see it. And for each item of preventable waste 
I shall offer a specific remedy. I want the Manager, the Chief 
Engineer and the Firemen to go with me to the boiler room 
and stay- with me through those four chapters. I shall have 
something to say to each of them. And what I shall say will 
apply to your plant, no matter whether you have hand-fired 
furnaces or automatic stokers — no matter whether you burn 
coal, oil, gas, sawdust or buffalo chips. Combustion is com- 
bustion. 



IT ISN'T THE ORIQINM.C0ST- 
//////////// ////'/ ""'ss//Ssl'AaA 



hello! This the Hard 
Nut CoalGTSenouj 

Two TortS** Coat — 
WHRT's'fVT <? BOCKS 

X ^ To*- GoodBY*!V j 



IT'5 THE- 

UPKEEP 



A. 
STove 

OM 
PS*. 



?nnrirr 



" s *fe*«at 



MoOflBL, 



The funny thing about this cartoon is that "hard nut" coal 
is selling today (in these glorious days of peace and high 
prices) at thirteen and a half bucks per ton. 



50 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

CHAPTER II. 
HOW YOUR FUEL IS WASTED. 

Waste is the "black beast" of every manufacturing busi- 
ness. It has more lives than any cat that was ever kittened. 
We can't kill it. We can only fight it and we must be con- 
tinually on the alert if we would keep the brute out of the 
establishment. Eternal vigilance is the price of economy. 

As I tried to show in the first chapter, fuel economy waits 
for somebody to start something. After things are started 
economy demands a very persistent follow-up and a careful 
attention to details. Fuel economy depends upon little things 
and many of them. I suppose the same thing may be said 
of economy in any other relation. However that may be, the 
statement applies with particular force to all of the economies 
that relate to the production of power. 

The first step toward fuel economy must be taken in the 
field of psychology by the association of ideas, rather than in 
the field of engineering. The Manager must change his con- 
cept of the power plant. He must get it into the factory class 
and associate it with ideas of money earning. He will then 
apply to his steam plant the same business methods that he 
uses in his office and factory. And if he does this the pre- 
ventable wastes will disappear and the boiler plant will begin 
to really earn real money. 

Now let us try the "association of ideas" and see where it 
leads us. Suppose your factory is losing instead of making 
money. What do you do about it? You seek to discover the 
causes of the loss and you lose no time about it. Your cost 
of production may be too high, your sales force may be 
inefficient or you may have been unwise in the extension of 
credits, you will go hunting for reasons and causes and you 
will keep on hunting until you find them. As a manufacturer 
you have two general problems to consider, viz.: How to 
transform the raw materials into the finished product with the 
least possible expense and how to transfer the finished product 

It is a short distance, as the crow flies, from 
the manager's office to the boiler room, but it 
is a dickens of a long road by the route that 
the manager travels. 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 51 

f i om your factory to the consumer with another least possible 
expense. The faster the consumer uses it up or wears it out 
the sooner he will be back again for some more of your 
product. You should worry. These same problems nresent 
themselves when you consider the manufacture of steam for- 
your own uses and a third problem arises from the fac#tl*al 
you are both producer and consumer. You want to make the 
steam go as far as possible after you have manufactured it. 
Accordingly if you think of economy twice in connection with 
your factory product, you must think of it three times in con- 
nection with the product of your boiler room. 

Most manufacturers regard the entire power problem as 
a thing of mystery. Most engineers regard the combustion 
problem as a baffling proposition. There is no mystery about 
either fire or water. We bring the two together and the 
result is steam. There is no more mystery about a furnace 
and a boiler than there is about a stove and a teakettle. The 
process in each case is exactly similar to that in the other. 
It consists in getting the heat out of the fuel and into the 
water. There are accordingly just two general problems to 
be considered in the economical production of steam, viz.: 

1. Are you actually using all of the fuel? 

2. Are you putting as much of the generated heat as 
possible into the boiler? 

Burn all of the coal you buy and use all of the heat from 
the coal you burn. That is all there is to it. And after 
you have made the steam and developed the power, don't 
waste them. These propositions are self-evident and I state 
them more for the purpose of outlining the discussion that 
is to follow than for your information. 

You are running a steam factory and selling its product 
to yourself. You are making steam at a loss and business 
gumption tells you that it should be made at a profit. Steam 
and power are commodities just as much as soap or plows 
or beer or pianos. You can go into the market and buy 
your steam and power from the central station. The differ- 
ence between the market price and the cost of production in 
your own plant expresses the loss or profit of your steam 
factory. 



52 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The central station makes power to sell and you make 
it to use. It treats power as a merchantable commodity and 
sells it at a profit. You treat power as an incident and you 
produce it at a loss. The central station looks after the big 
little things that affect the cost of power production and you 
permit your power house to look after itself. And I have 
been in central stations that were wasting a quarter of their 
fuel. They were able to stay in business because some of the 
isolated plants around them were wasting much more than a 
ciuarter. The engineers of isolated plants richly deserve what 
they are suffering from the competition of the central station. 

Power, like any other commodity, can be manufactured 
cheaper at wholesale than at retail. The central station has 
that economic advantage over the isolated power plant, but 
against this advantage are certain handicaps which tip the 
scales against it. It costs the central plant something to get 
and keep your business. It must run transmission lines and 
maintain them. All these items, which do not afflict the 
isolated plant, must be added to the central station's cost of 
power and to its total cost must be added a safe margin of 
profit. The "wholesale" explanation does not explain every- 
thing. If isolated plants were as economical in the use of 
fuel as they might be, the central station would find very 
poor pasture. The central station makes money because the 
isolated plants waste money. Now before you contract for 
outside power let us see what can be done to place your own 
steam plant upon a paying basis. 

The raw materials out of which steam is manufactured 
are fuel, air and water. Air costs nothing and in order to 
simplify the work before us we will assume that water costs 
no more than air. The cost of water in the steam factory 
may, of course, be considerable. The only costs we shall 
consider are those directly and indirectly related to the fuel, 
which we will assume to be coal. 

Let us suppose that we buy a ton of coal at the mine and 
that the heat value of the fuel is 14,500 British thermal units 
per pound. There will accordingly be 29,000,000 heat units in 
our ton of coal. As each heat unit represents 778 foot pounds 
of energy we find that we have purchased considerable latent 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 53 

dynamics. If the energy in a few pounds of that coal should 
be explosively released in your boiler room there wouldn't 
be enough left of your factory plant to make a grease spot on 
the horizon. The process of steam power production consists 
in taking this energy out of the coal and making it do useful 
work in the factory. If we could only reach the switchboard 
with all of the energy that we buy at the mine the power bill 
would not be a serious matter. The average steam plant 
wastes 98 per cent of the energy between the mine and the 
machine. If a ton of coal costs $3.00 we get our money's 
worth on a nickel and a fraction of a cent. We begin to spill 
the energy out of that ton of coal as soon as it is loaded into 
the railroad car at the mine and we keep on spilling energy 
whenever we change it from one receptacle to another or 
transform it from one condition to another. More than half 
of the energy waste in the average power plant is preventable, 
so that if all of the losses could receive prompt attention we 
should be able to make a half a ton of coal do what a whole 
ton had been doing before. 

The table and diagram, presented in Chapter I, show about 
how the losses take place between the mine and the machine 
in your factory. They show exactly where we must look to 
make the fuel savings. 

The first spill of energy takes place when the coal is 
exposed to the weather. It oxidizes very slowly. The Uni- 
versity of Illinois has conducted extensive experiments to 
determine the effect that "weathering" has upon coal. The 
loss was found to be most rapid during the week or ten days 
first following exposure after mining. The waste thereafter. 
while very slow, continued indefinitely. The loss is greater 
with the smaller sizes of coal owing to the fact that a pro- 
portionately greater surface is exposed to the action of oxygen 
as the lumps of coal decrease in size. The loss in covered bins 
was substantially the same as in open bins. It was least 
when the coal was stored under water. In its bulletin on the 
"Weathering of Coal" the University says: 

"In the coals that have been tested, 1 per cent is about the 
average loss for the first week and 3 to 3% per cent would 
cover the loss for a year, although in some cases the loss was 
found to be as high as 5 per cent in a year." 



54 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

"It is probable that the figures given above are away in 
excess of what would be expected in commercially stored coal. 
It is obvious that only those portions of the coal pile that are 
actually exposed to the weather will be influenced by atmos- 
pheric action. Chemical change is, however, likely to take 
place at the interior of the coal pile. One of the objections 
to coal storage is the danger of heating and spontaneous com- 
bustion. These dangers are increased when the coal is in a 
finely divided condition and contains sulphur or pyrites of iron. 
When coal heats spontaneously there is a loss of heat energy 
equal to the actual heat generated and when it ignites spon- 
taneously the loss may be total." 

Unless there is some good reason for the storage of coal 
in quantity it is best to keep as little of it on hand as possible. 
The storage place should, of course, be located with reference 
to convenience and ease of transferring the fuel from the 
bunkers to the furnaces. My observation has been that in 
many power plants a change in the location and arrangement 
of the bunkers would result in a material saving of money. 
Labor, like coal, represents money, and it is often more diffi- 
cult to handle than the inanimate fuel. The big central station 
installs coal and ash handling machinery which cuts down 
the cost of power by reducing the cost of labor. 

It is not practical to store coal under water and so I have 
set the loss due to weathering in the column of non-prevent- 
able wastes. I have placed this loss at 1 per cent, or 290,000 
heat units, and we won't cry about it because there are 
enough losses ahead of us to weep over. 

To get any good from coal you must put it in the furnace 
and burn it. How much of your coal is wasted in handling? 
A lot more than you imagine. Take a walk through your 
boiler room and around your boiler house and see for yourself. 
You will find raw coal everywhere. Feet and wheels have 
ground it into a powder. You will find coal in the ash pile 
that never saw the inside of the furnace. If there is coal in 
front of the boilers when the fires are cleaned some of it will 
get into the ash and be carried to the dump. Some of the ash 
will get into the coal and with it go into the furnace. The 
result- will be clinkers, which make work and waste fuel. 
The loss in handling is very small as compared with some 
other losses. It is large enough to be considered and it can 
be cured if you will see that better housekeeping methods are 
adopted in your boiler room. I have placed the loss in han- 
dling at 1 per cent of the fuel. It is less than that in some 



Hoiv Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



55 



plants and much more in some others. The reader will 
remember that in all of the figures presented in this book the 
conditions that obtain in average power plants, big and little, 
are being considered. 

Now, how will you induce your men to be more careful in 
the handling of your fuel? By impressing the fact upon them 
that a lump of coal represents money. The fireman, as I have 
already told you, does not think of coal in terms of money. 




I was walking through the boiler room of a power plant 
not long ago in company with the Manager. We stopped to 
watch a fireman who was loading up a wheel-barrow with 
clinkers and ashes. When the man's back was turned I 
dropped a nickel at his feet and then called his attention to 
the coin, with the remark that somebody was very careless 
with money. He lost no time in putting that nickel in his 
pocket. Visions of a foaming tin bucket rose before him. I 
said to him: "Man, there must be something wrong with 
your eyesight. I saw another nickel go into that wheel- 
barrow with the ashes." He dumped that barrow of ashes 
on the .floor and pawed all through it. He didn't find the 



56 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

money. I said: "Bring me a pail of water and I will show 
you how to find money in ashes." If there is anything that 
will make coal and coke stand up in a pile of ashes it is a 
douche of water. I drenched the ash-pile and then picked it 
over. I got a respectable looking pile of coke and coal from 
the ashes. It was unnecessary to explain to the fireman 
what I meant by money in the ashes, or to explain to him 
that the money he was throwing away belonged to the Man- 
ager of the plant who stood beside me. The next time it 
rains take your firemen to the ash dump and give them an 
object lesson. 

You are not burning the coke that goes through your 
grates with the ash and you are not burning the combustble 
gases that go up your chimney with the smoke. When you 
have looked around the boiler room and the boiler house, 
when you have looked at the ash-pile and the chimney, you 
will have some idea of the fuel that is being wasted without 
being burned. 

We must expect to find some coke in the ash and you 
need not be frightened if you see some smoke coming from 
the chimney. Smoke means waste, as we shall see later on, 
but not in the way that is popularly supposed. The soot of 
the smoke cannot in the very worst circumstances exceed 2 per 
cent of the carbon in the fuel. There may be a great deal of 
smoke going up the chimney and very little combustible, or 
there may be a great deal of combustible and very little smoke. 
There may be combustible gas and considerable of it in the 
entire absence of smoke. These things will have consideration 
in a later chapter. 

You must expect to find some coke in the ash. It is im- 
possible to burn coal for power purposes and avoid all waste 
through the grates. It is possible to keep the loss down to a 
minimum. In order to know what the waste really amounts to 
you must first know how much ash the coal itself contains. 
If you have been having your coal analyzed you will know 
how much ash the raw fuel carries. In the absence of a 
laboratory report you will be able to get quite accurate data 
in the following manner: Weigh all of the coal burned dur- 
in a day's run and all of the ash and clinker resulting. These 



Hoiv Your Fuel Is Wasted. 57 

weights should be taken every day, but that is not the prac- 
tice in the average power plant. Take a couple of scoops 
of ashes from each barrow load as it is removed. Douse 
these ashes with water and have them carefully picked over. 
On weighing the coke and ash proper you will have the data 
from which the actual "ash waste" can be closely computed. 
If the loss does not exceed 1 per cent of the combustible of 
the coal, you are doing well. If you are wasting four or five 
per cent, as is likely to be the case, your firemen must mend 
their ways. 

Much of the waste detected in the ash pit of the boiler 
furnace is due to the improper use of fire tools. The slice 
bar is abused almost every time that it is used. Watch your 
fireman when he uses it. He will run it along the grates 
under the fuel and then employ it as a pry to tear the fuel to 
pieces. This mixes ash with incandescent carbon. The ash 
fuses and clinkers result. The purpose of the slice bar is to 
cut or "slice" the fuel away from the grates and to cause the 
fine ash to fall through the grates. Under no circumstances 
use it unless the condition of the fire calls for it. The fireman 
can tell from the dark spots in the ash pit when and where 
the fire needs slicing. 

Why do you burn coal under a boiler? To make steam, 
of course, by passing the heat from the furnace through the 
metal work of the boiler where it can get action on the water. 
Now, suppose that you cool down the hot gases before they 
reach the heating surfaces of the boiler, or that you cool 
them by outside influences while they are in contact with the 
heating surfaces of the boiler, or that you hinder the heat in 
some way from passing through the metal to the water, or 
that you permit some of the heat to escape before it has a 
chance at the boiler — you will lose just that much heat, won't 
you? And you will have to burn just that much more coal to 
replace the heat that has been lost. 

Burn as much of the fuel as possible — i. e., waste as little 
as possible on the floor, in the ash and in the chimney. 

Use as much as possible of the heat resulting from the 
fuel that you actually burn. 

Do these two things and you will get all of the steam 



58 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

that it is possible to make with the furnace and boiler equip- 
ment that you have. 

• You probably lose about 5 per cent of the heat generated 
in the furnace through radiation from the furnace and the 
boiler setting. You could stop four-fifths of this loss by 
proper insulation. One or two inches of asbestos plaster, 
covered with canvas and the canvas covered with paint, 
will make a serviceable overcoat for a boiler setting. 

This overcoat will serve the double purpose of keeping 
the heat in and the "cold out." You apply weather strips, 
storm sa^h and storm doors to your houses. Use the same 
degree of common sense with your boilers. The radiation 
loss is a small circumstance compared with that due to excess 
air and the overcoat will reduce the excess air. By "excess 
air" I mean the air that is taken into the boiler furnace or 
into the passes of the boiler in addition to that actually used 
in the processes of combustion. Suppose we take 100 cubic 
feet of air into the boiler furnace and use all of the oxygen 
in that air to produce combustion, and suppose that we 
actually produce complete combustion under such circum- 
stances. The furnace would be operating under ideal condi- 
tions and with the theoretical air supply. The furnace 
temperature would be extremely high — close to 4,500 degrees 
Fahrenheit. Nobody has ever seen such conditions in a coal 
burning furnace. I am only supposing them. In burning a 
solid fuel it is quite impossible to maintain uniform conditions 
throughout the fuel bed. The coal will be a shade thinner in 
some places than in others. Little cracks and fissures will 
form in the fuel as it settles on the grates. These thin places 
and cracks oppose less resistance to the passage of air than 
the other portions of the fuel bed and they get more than 
their share of it. Hence it follows that in burning coal or any 
solid fuel we are forced to entertain some excess air in the 
furnace. If we cut out this excess some portions of the fuel 
bed will not get enough air and the result will be incomplete 
combustion. The gas CO* will be formed and flow up the 
chimney. CO is the principal constituent of the illuminating 
gas which is piped to your residence at $1.00 per thousand 



*CO is the "enemy alien" of combustion. 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 59 

cubic feet by the gas company. You can't afford to send a 
valuable gas like that up the chimney. 

You can get complete combustion of coal in the boiler 
furnace and not use more than 40 per cent excess air. If the 
coal runs high in ash it will be necessary to use more air, 
and if you are burning oil or gas under your boilers you can 
reduce the 40 per cent excess. In the next chapter I shall 
tell you how you may determine the exact percentage of air 
excess as well as the exact percentage of combustible CO. 

A brick is a porous thing. Thow a dry one into a pail of 
water and watch the bubbles as the water enters the pores of 
the brick and drives out the air. Weigh the brick before it 
goes in and after it comes out of the water. Now, remember 
that there is a partial vacuum on the inside of your boiler 
setting when the furnace is in operation, and atmospheric 
pressure on the outside of it. Every pore in every brick is 
busy trying to satisfy that vacuum. More cold air will flow 
right through those bricks in your boiler setting than you 
imagine. If you will glue an air-tight box to your boiler 
setting and connect a sensitive differential draft gage, such 
as is shown on another page of this book, with a tube running 
into the box, you will find that the suction of the chimney is 
communicated through the pores of the brick and that this 
will be indicated by the movement of the liquid in the draft 
gage. 

The 40 per cent excess air that you are forced to enter- 
tain reduces the furnace temperature about 1,500 degrees 
Fahrenheit. You want no more of that sort of reduction than 
you are forced to stand. Hence you want to stop the infliltra- 
tion of air through the brick work. The overcoat will stop it. 
If it is not the season for "overcoats" in your power plant 
you can stop the air seepage by "sizing" or painting the 
brickwork. The paint will make the boiler house look more 
home-like to the fireman and you will get a dividend on your 
paint investment every time the fireman throws in a shovel 
of coal. 

The cold air loss due to infiltration through the brick 
compares with the other cold air losses your plant is suffering 
as a sneeze compares to a Panhandle Norther. We are right 



60 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

on the track now of some of the old "he" losses that are 
making a joke of economy in your boiler room. 

The chimney is constantly pumping air and gas from your 
furnace and boiler. The partial vacuum created will cause 
air to flow into the furnace and the gas passes of the boiler 
wherever and whenever it can get in. Now if there is a 
crack in the brickwork that looks suspicious, try that crack 
with a candle flame. If there is an inward draft of air the 
candle flame will indicate it. A tallow candle or a kerosene 
torch is one of the most important pieces of testing apparatus 
that you can have in your boiler room. Whatever else you 
neglect to get, don't neglect the torch or candle. 

In the table of losses preceding I have fixed that due to air 
leaks in the furnace and boiler setting at 10 per cent of the 
heat generated in the furnace and this is a conservative esti- 
mate for the average power plant. I have seen savings of 20 
per cent made by stopping up the rat-holes in the settings of 
water tube boilers. I have known a plant to go from three 
boilers to two after the leaks were stopped. And I have the 
very dickens of a time making some engineers believe that the 
leaks in their boiler settings really amount to something. I 
have to take a gas analyzer and prove it to them by actually 
measuring the volume of air that is flowing through the 
cracks as compared with the volume that is used to burn the 
coal. They seem to think that you can make steam with 
cold air. 

Engineers often say to me, "What's the use of plastering 
up cracks in the brickwork? They will not stay plastered. 
The stuff will shrink when it dries and fall out." Of course 
it will. Therefore, don't "plaster" the cracks. Calk them 
with something that will not fall out. Make a very thin mix- 
ture of fire clay and stir cotton waste into it, first pulling 
the waste apart so that every fibre of it will be covered with 
the clay. The waste being dry, will pick up a lot of the clay. 
Next sharpen a piece of board for a calking tool and with it 
drive the clay-coated waste into the crack. Fill the crack 
full and drive the stuff in tight. It will stay there until the 
setting falls down and the cows come home. This can be 
done while the boiler is in operation so that you can begin to 



Hoiv Your Fuel Is Wasted. 61 

get financial returns on your clay and cotton investment 
without waiting for the boiler to be shut down. Two or 
three hours' work and a dollar's worth of material will stop 
a lot of cracks. There are cements and other materials on 
the market made especially for the purpose of permanently 
sealing up a brick boiler setting. They are somewhat superior 
to the paint and the fire-clay that I have here recommended. 

You must not assume that any crack you may find any- 
where about the boiler setting is not conducting air to the 
heating surfaces of the boiler. You don't know where that 
crack leads to and the only safe thing is to try the candle 
flame on it. And remember that a crevice between an "I" 
beam or a stay and the brickwork may lead to some hidden 
avenue that will carry cold air where it will do a lot of dam- 
age. And don't forget to inspect the brickwork on top of the 
boiler. Don't make a casual inspection. Be thorough. I 
found air leaks on one occasion, aggregating one and a half 
square feet, at the rear of a marine boiler of the "B. and W." 
type when the engineers of the ship were willing to make 
oath that everything was air tight. On another occasion I 
won the cigars by finding more than 20 sizable air leaks in 
the brickwork of a "B. and W." boiler in a stationary plant. 
The engineer had just finished calking the brickwork of that 
boiler and he thought it was air tight. I had had more 
experience in the air leak business than that engineer and I 
knew where to look for trouble. 

You are not through looking for air leaks when you have 
finished inspecting the brickwork of the boiler setting. In- 
spect the "metal work." I assume that in going over the 
brick work you will have seen to the clean-out doors, the 
blow-off pipe, etc. This is not the "metal work" that I refer 
to. You are not through with the work of inspection until 
you have tried the candle at the boiler headers. A boiler of 
the "B. and W." type is an admirable steam generator and it 
passes my understanding why the manufacturers have not 
devised some practical means of preventing air from flowing 
in around the front headers into the first pass of the boiler. 
The boiler doors are supposed to keep cold air away from the 
headers, but in most cases they don't do it. Show me a "B. 



62 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

and W." boiler and I will bet five to one that I can find some 
place about the boiler doors where the draft will suck out 
the flame of a candle. An inflow of cold air around those 
boiler doors is not only bad for efficiency, it is bad for the 
boiler headers. Those headers were properly packed, I sup- 
pose, when the boiler was originally installed. The trouble 
is that the packing has fallen out and nobody has thought 
worth while to replace it. When the engineer's atten- 
tion is called to the situation at the boiler front he is 
surprised. He had supposed that the packing was in proper 
condition and that the doors were tight. It is bad practice 
to "suppose" anything about a steam boiler. The trouble 
with the boiler door is that it will warp, that the catches will 
not draw it into proper position, that one or more of the 
catches may be broken, or that some careless somebody will 
neglect to see that the door is really closed in the way that 
the builders intended. In one case that came under my obser- 
vation an actual fuel saving of 20 per cent was effected by 
packing the front headers of a battery of "B. and W." boilers. 
In that instance over 200 per cent excess air was flowing 
around the boiler headers into the first pass. 

Excess air is the greatest of all causes of fuel loss. The 
tax exacted by it exceeds the sum of all the other taxes com- 
bined that are levied by the wasteful furnace upon the suf- 
fering coal pile. I took the trouble to examine the logs of 
all of the tests made by the United States Geological Survey 
at its exposition testing plant in St. Louis. The excess air 
losses as shown by those tests were ten times the losses due 
to incomplete combustion. If you want to make a home-run 
for efficiency begin on excess air. 

I absolved your fireman in the last chapter and I absolve 
him again. He is not responsible for the physical condition of 
your boiler plant. He takes the boilers as he finds them in 
the morning and he fires as he sees fit during the day. He 
hasn't time to calk air leaks and he isn't hired for that 
purpose. You can't make steam with a sieve. If you will 
take a candle and go over your boiler setting you will find 
that you are trying to do so. You could go all over a boiler 
setting in the time that it has taken to read this Jeremiad on 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 63 

air leaks. After you stop the leaks you will find that the 
boiler steams more easily and that there is more draft. Cold 
air kills draft. You may now have to check the dampers to 
keep the safety valves from blowing. 

An Eastern factory had great difficulty in getting enough 
steam from its three return tubular boilers. They were 
actually contemplating the installation of a fourth boiler. 
The engineer bought five cents' worth of tallow candles and 
went after the air leaks. When the cracks were calked there 
was plenty of steam. Now most men would have stopped at 
this point because most men are satisfied when there is 
enough steam for the factory. They look upon the boiler 
plant as just something to make steam, not as something that 
should be made to earn a profit like the factory proper. This 
engineer had been inoculated with the efficiency germ and he 
wasn't satisfied. Efficiency is the most appetizing thing. 
When you get a taste of the real article you can't get enough 
of it. In March, 1911, the plant in question was burning 
coal at the rate of 2,300 tons per annum. It is now burning 
coal at the rate of 1,000 tons per annum and turning out as 
much product as in 1911. This is a reduction of 56 per cent 
and if you don't believe the story you don't have to.* The 
improvement was due to the efficiency germ that got into the 
engineer's system. 

When the engineer had stopped up all the air leaks he 
could find he said to himself, "Are there any other places 
where cold air can get in to cool off the hot furnace gases?" 
This question led to the following conclusion: 

When the furnace doors are open cold air will rush in 
and cool off things. This is bad for the coal account and it 
is bad for the boiler, as the cooling off and heating up mean 
expansion and contraction, which in turn lead to leaks. 
Therefore, it is essential that the furnace doors should be 
open for the shortest periods possible. To this end the fire- 
men must have the coal where they can reach it quickly and 
the doors must be fixed so that they can be opened and closed 
in the shortest possible time, and with the least possible 
effort. The firemen must understand that "time is the essence 



*Name and address will be supplied, if desired. 



64 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

of things" when the furnace doors are open. 

These conclusions led to certain minor re-arrangements 
and the firemen were speeded up to an appreciable degree. 
The engineer then remembered having read in a book some- 
where that a coal burning furnace can be most economically 
operated with about 40 per cent excess air — that anything in 
excess of 40 per cent leads to needless waste through a need- 
less chilling of the gases. His line of reasoning led him to a 
further conclusion, viz. — that cold air could get into the fur- 
nace through a hole in the fuel bed, also that there must be 
some relation between the draft over the grates and the 
resistance of the fuel on the grates. In other words, too 
strong a draft and too thin a fuel bed will lead to excess air 
and the excess taken in this manner is just as damaging to 
efficiency as an excess taken in any other manner. 

He now saw that an apparatus for measuring the excess 
air carried by the chimney gases would be essential before he 
could go further with his investigations. Without such ap- 
paratus he would never know how near or how far he might 
be from that dead line of 40 per cent excess. Moreover, he 
could never expect to standardize the firing practice in his 
boiler room without gages to measure the drafts over the 
fire and an apparatus to measure the excess air. 

On inquiry he learned that the very apparatus he required 
had been on the market and in use in power plants for many 
years, moreover, that he could take his choice among several 
different styles of such apparatus and largely suit himself in 
the matter of price. He accordingly purchased a draft gage 
for each boiler furnace and one flue gas analyzer. 

While waiting for this apparatus to arrive the engineer 
became curious about the heating surfaces of his boilers. 
On the Sunday following his first investigations one of the 
boilers was shut down and he made an examination of that 
boiler. It had been customary theretofore to just wash the 
boilers out when they were down and to rely upon the saving 
offices of some physicking boiler compound. There was a 
whitish incrustation on the boiler tubes and a cleaning tool 
was obtained on the gamble that the innocent appearing white 
stuff might not be as innocent as it looked. It is sometimes 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 65 

impossible to tell by looking at a boiler tube whether the 
scale is as thick as an egg shell or as thick as a pancake. 
When the cleaning tool was through with the guts of those 
boilers it had jarred loose about a wagon load of scale and 
the engineer ceased to wonder why his boiler efficiency had 
been suffering with the belly-ache. 

The heating surfaces of boilers are made as thin as safety 
will permit, because the thinner the metal the more rapidly 
the heat will be transmitted to the water. Now the con- 
ductivity of steel is about five times that of lime scale, so 
that a tube with a quarter of an inch of scale upon it will 
give heat to the water no faster than a steel tube an inch 
and a quarter thick. Boiler tubes are about an eighth of an 
inch thick, so that one-fortieth of an inch of scale lessens the 
factor of conductivity to the same extent that it would be 
reduced by doubling the thickness of the tube. Any quantity 
of scale is bad for economy. 

The cleaning tool also dislodged quite a lot of carbon- 
aceous scale from the fire side of the tubes so that after the 
cleaning was finished both the gases and the water were in 
contact with the clean metal. The effect was extremely 
pronounced. It had been formerly difficult to get sufficient 
steam. The stopping of the air leaks had helped amazingly. 
The cleaning of the heating surfaces gave such an impulse 
to the boilers that there was now too much steam and one 
of the boilers was laid out of service. 

It is quite superfluous to say that the boilers in that plant 
are now cleaned of soot and scale accumulations so frequently 
that the heating surfaces are kept in proper condition to 
perform their functions all of the time. 

I cannot pass this subject without a word of solemn warn- 
ing about the injudicious use of boiler compounds.* In most 
cases they do more harm than good and in some cases they 
have been the originating causes of destructive boiler explo- 
sions. Your engineer is liable to fix up some home-made 
preparation and put it in his boilers if he is not cautioned. 
I have actually known muriatic acid to be used. In the back 

*The term "Boiler Compound" as here used is not intended 
to include the various preparations on the warket for treating 
the metal work of the boiler to prevent the adherence of scale. 



66 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

woods districts engineers still put stable manure in the boiler 
on the presumption, I suppose, that it will be sure to increase 
the horse power. Don't buy a stock boiler compound under 
any circumstances. It may prove to be the very thing you 
should not use. Never use any compound until the water 
you are using has been analyzed and a compound especially 
prepared for that water. Whatever compound you do use. 
inspect the tubes whenever the boiler is down and clean them 
whenever necessary- 

When the gas analyzer and draft gages arrived a further 
surprise was sprung upon the coal account. It was found 
that instead of an air excess of 40 per cent the furnaces were 
taking over 300 per cent. The cooling effect of that much 
air offset the heat derived from about one-quarter of the coal 
burned. It did not take long to find the reason for this 
excess air. The fires were too thin on the grates and the 
firemen were not careful to distribute the coal evenly over 
the grates. Thin spots and holes, through which excess air 
was pulled by the draft of the chimney, were the result. 
After a little experimenting the proper thickness of the fires 
was determined and marks were placed upon the liners of the 
fire doors to guide the firemen. The effect of anything that 
was done to increase or decrease the air excess could be 
determined with the gas analyzer in less than a minute. This 
made it possible for the engineer to give the firemen some 
object lessons. He showed them the effect of every little 
crack and rat-hole in the fuel bed. He was even able to 
measure the exact volume of air flowing through a given 
hole in the fire and to tell the firemen in terms of coal how 
much saving the closing of that hole represented. 

The two boilers now made more steam than the plant 
could use, whereas the factory had been limping with three 
boilers before the engineer got busy with his tallow candles. 
The second boiler was then cut out of service, but the load 
proved too much for one lonesome boiler. The grate surfaces 
were then reduced by shortening and narrowing the grates 
under the two boilers. The engineer went as far as he 
thought it was safe to go in reducing grate areas and still 
there was too much steam. He then reduced the rate of fuel 



Hoiv Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



67 



consumption by reducing the draft. He placed a draft gage 
on each boiler furnace and equalized the draft by adjusting 
the individual boiler dampers. In this way the two boilers 
were made to work under the same draft conditions and the 
combustion relations were reduced to a common denominator. 
The fireman could now treat the two furnaces exactly alike. 
What applied to the one applied to the other. There were 
the draft gages to show him when he had exactly the right 
draft and there were the marks on the door liners to show 
him when the fuel was of just the right thickness on the 
grates. The fireman could now be reasonably certain at all 
times that the air excess was close to 40 per cent and that 
he was working the furnaces at just about the top notch of 
efficiency. 

Now it is one thing to show a fireman what to do and how 
to do it. It is another thing to have him do it when nobody 
is watching. Everything about the boilers had been checked 
up and the fireman knew exactly how to get efficiency and 
a lot of it. It was now just a matter of checking up the fire- 
men. A gas collecting device was placed on each boiler so 
that at the end of a watch it could be known in a few min- 
utes exactly how much excess air had flowed across the heat- 
ing surfaces of the boilers during that watch. The engineer 
now had the means of exactly rating the efficiency of each 
fireman. 

The result of all of these things was a saving in that plant 
of more than 56 per cent of the fuel. And the happiest people 
about the plant were the firemen. They were now handling 
less than one-half of the coal and ashes that they had been 
handling before. They had learned that a little mental 
exercise will save a great dsal of manual labor. . Skilful 
firing, like skilful anything else, requires some thought and 
a reasonable amount of attention to certain details. And when 
a man knows that he is skilful he begins to take pr.ds in his 
skill. This is human nature — the same human nature that 
I have mentioned before. And, Mr. Manager, take advan- 
tage of human nature wherever you can. If you don't do it. 
human nature will take advantage of you. 

The table, Chapter I, shows about how the other losses 



68 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

between the mine and the machine occur. I have touched to 
some extent upon all of the losses with which we are con- 
cerned in this book, except that due to soot deposits upon the 
heating surfaces of the boiler. This will receive attention in 
its logical place in a later chapter. 

Take off your hat to the next load of coal that is delivered 
to your bunkers. It contains a quantity of energy that is quite 
beyond our powers of comprehension. Remember that you 
are wasting 98 per cent of it. I have in my desk a loaded 
cartridge for a modern high-power rifle. It contains a pinch 
of carbon in the form of smokeless powder. There is enough 
sleeping energy there to strike a blow of more than a foot 
ton at a distance of one mile. There are twenty-nine million 
heat units* in your ton of coal and each one of them when 
converted into mechanical energy is good for 778 foot pounds. 
It takes a good sized modern locomotive to weigh 200 tons. 
Imagine a string of 56,405 such locomotives. There is enough 
energy in your ton of coal to raise all of them with their 
drive wheels spinning in the air one foot above the rails. 
The trouble is that our methods of transforming and applying 
this energy are crude and inefficient. Old Mother Nature sat 
up nights for more than five million years to prepare this 
energy for us. Men toil and sometimes die in coal mines to 
get it for us. We buy it with the money that other men have 
roiled and sweated to produce. And after you get that ton of 
coal into your bunkers, how do you treat it? You arm an 
ignorant fireman with a' 90-cent shovel and "sick" him on it. 
Now if I ask your fireman anything about excess air or the 
other causes of fuel loss within his powers of prevention he 
tries to rub his ears off with his shoulders. The shrug is his 
mode of expressing an absolute and ultimate negation of 
understanding. Is there anything about the bad effects of cold 
air on boiler surfaces that the fireman cannot understand? 
Somebody ought to explain the effects of air holes in the fire 
to him. He needs a little teaching. But nobody ever heard 
of anybody teaching any fireman anything in your boiler 
house. Your engineer knows that it is bad to allow cold air 



* PERHAPS: — A heat unit, or one B. t. u., is the quantity 
of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree F. in 
temperature. 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



69 



to flow in upon the tubes in the first pass of his water tube 
boilers, and yet I can shove a full-grown torn cat through some 
of the holes around his boiler headers. Maybe you think I am 
lying about the air leaks. Go and see for yourself before you 
come to such conclusion. The trouble with the engineer is 
that he hasn't thought about these things. He just needs a 
jolt from somebody and I am trying to jolt him. The trouble 
with the Manager is that he believes the fuel economy ques- 
tion to be outside the purview of his jurisdiction. He leaves 
all such things to the superintendent or the engineer or some- 
body else below him. As Dr. Dowie used to express it, "He 
doesn't believe in keeping a dog and doing his own barking." 
The result is that nobody barks about fuel economy in your 
power plant and that is the reason for my barking and 
howling. 

YOU ARE WATCHING THE SPIGOT IN 
THE ENGINE ROOM AND FORGETTING 
THE BUNGHOLE IN THE BOILER HOUSE. 




— Apologies to The Saturday Evening* Post. 

Mr. Engineer, the time has come for you to leave the 
Stillson wrench and the oil can to the attention of somebody 



70 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

else. The boiler room is the place where you can save your 
employer's money. Let me give you a tip: If you do not 
interest yourself in combustion, steam engineering will not 
be interested very much longer in you. Engineers who do 
not understand the trick of making steam with real economy 
will be physicked out of boiler plants by the wholesale before 
you are very much older. 

You ought to get out in the boiler room several times a 
day and have it out with Casey, because you know that he is 
wasting fuel. But you do not do that. You are afraid that 
Casey would either "bean" you with a lump of coal or quit the 
job if you said anything, and so you hide around the corner, 
scratch your head, pray that the "old man" will not get his 
eyes on the coal bill and swear at Casey, while he quite 
calmly bucks the coal to keep your boilers going and you 
either have no steam at all or else the safety's blowing. The 
coal he wastes for you each day would pay your weekly 
wages. This waste destroys your peace of mind, your very 
soul enrages. Your job, you know, depends upon this matter 
of expenses. You must keep down the fuel bills or take the 




Patrick Aloysius Casey. 



Hoiv Your Fuel Is Wasted. 



71 



consequences. And when the monthly coal bill conies and says 
"six hundred dollars," you shake and quake; it's awful, how 
the "old man" swears and hollers. You think your job is gone, 
for sure. Despair engulfs your soul, while Casey merely 
grunts and spits and fills her up with coal. You don't know 
how it all will end. Your heart is heavy — very. You'd fight 
him, but you do not dare, for Casey comes from Kerry. 



naff ,f/ V\ 




"Eb Haskins' sow and pigs kept a gittin in his garden and 
a rootin of it up. Eb stopped all of the little holes in the 
pickets but the durned fool forgot that the gate was off'n the 
hinges." 

Down East Tales. 



The thing that needs it worst 
Should always get it first. 



When your house is afire and the garden needs watering 
which way do you run with a pail of water? 



You are concerned about the chance to save a nickel in 
the engine room — so much concerned that you forget about 
the loss of the Dollars in the boiler room. 



72 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

CHAPTER III. 
HOW TO "SPOT" YOUR FUEL WASTES. 

Now that we know how the wastes occur and about where 
to look for them we will visit your boiler room and take a 
look at them. I have been harping on 25 per cent in the 
first two chapters as a measure of the preventable wastes in 
the boiler room. I don't know what your losses are because 
I was never in your boiler room. I do know that if the "hit 
or miss," "catch as catch can" methods prevailing in the 
average plant are to be found in yours, that your preventable 
furnace wastes, when we come to measure them, will be 
mighty close to a quarter of your coal. 

Some twenty questions were propounded to the engineer 
in the first chapter, and he is entitled to know exactly how 
those questions may be answered. We will get ready to 
answer some of them. 
WHAT IS THE EFFICIENCY OF YOUR BOILER FURNACES? 

I put that question last summer to the Manager of a big 
Southern factory. "Wait a moment," said he, "and I will 
tell you." He pushed a button, wrote a message on a slip of 
paper and sent it out by the office boy. In a few moments the 
paper was returned and this statement had been endorsed 
upon it by the chief engineer: "We produce a kilowatt with 
5.341 pounds of coal." The Manager smiled in a satisfied 
way as he handed me the paper. "There's the answer to your 
question," said he, "worked out to three decimal places." 

I replied, "Your answer is not responsive to my question." 
Every time I ask an engineer about the efficiency of his 
furnaces he begins to talk about something else — usually 
about the cost per kilowatt hour. Sometimes he has infor- 
mation on the pounds of water evaporated per pound of coal 
burned, which is closer to the point but still a long way 
from it. In either case he is giving me the two ends of the 
process only, and leaving me entirely in the dark as to what 
is taking place between the extremes. Now I have nothing 
against your kilowatts and what-nots. It is of considerable 
importance that you should know the cost per kilowatt hour 
as it gives you a line on the over-all efficiency of your plant. 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 73 

But that is all it does do. Is there anything about that figure 
of 5.341 pounds of coal per kilowatt hour that will enable you 
to place your finger on any specific thing about your power 
plant and to say as you do so, "We are wasting fuel here; 
we must do this and that and after we have done it we shall 
have reduced the coal consumption per kilowatt hour? Your 
engineer's bookkeeping is good as far as it goes, but it does 
not go far enough It analyzes nothing for us and hence it 
gets us nowhere 

Now if you will take up the different factors in your 
power plant, one at a time, and scrutinize each of them with- 
out relation to any other you will get some information that 
means something If you will bring each factor up to the 
highest possible state of efficiency you won't need to worry 
about the cost per kilowatt hour It will take care of itself. 
It will be as low as it is possible to get it and you will have to 
be satisfied with it, whatever it is. No amount of bookkeep- 
ing will change it. If I should ask you about the efficiency 
of your stenographer would it be a responsive answer to tell 
me what your gross annual sales were last year? Or if I 
should ask you how you are feeling this morning, would it 
be a responsive answer to say that your family, consisting of 
your wife, your three children, your mother-in-law, the hired 
girl and yourself, were 50 per cent well? Now, when I try 
to find out how much coal you are wasting at the boiler 
furnace you give me a figure, that, if I knew the heat value 
of your coal, would tell me something about the combined 
efficiency of the fireman, the furnace, the boiler, the econo- 
mizer, the superheater, the engine, the generator and the 
lubricating oil. We can't convict anything on the cost per 
kilowatt hour. The figure may tell us that something is 
wrong somewhere, but that is all it does tell us. It is of no 
fuel-saving, money-making use to us. 

Much of the bookkeeping in power plants is useless be- 
cause it leads to nothing. In what way does it help you to 
know the cost per kilowatt hour if the information does not 
assist you to reduce the cost per kilowatt hour? You can 
get your cost of power by adding up each month all of the 
expenses that the power house has incurred and including 



74 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

a charge for interest and depreciation. Such general infor- 
mation will enable the manufacturer to determine the power 
cost per unit quantity of his product and this is necessary to 
his cost-keeping system. It is valuable also for purposes of 
comparison. Month can be compared with month and fiscal 
period with fiscal period. The unit fuel cost can also be 
compared -with- -that of other factories in the same industry. 
While such comparison may result in satisfaction it is not 
likely to result in anything else. The fact that you are pro- 
ducing power at less cost per unit of product than your 
neighbor does not prove that you are producing it econom- 
ically. There are degrees of waste. If the other fellow is 
wasting 40 per cent that is no reason why you should be 
complacent with a waste of 20 per cent. 

I am not the first man to criticise the current system of 
power house bookkeeping. The following is quoted from 
one of the most prominent efficiency engineers in the United 
States: 

"Consequently, the common practice is to compare the data 
at two extreme ends of process. Let us take, for instance, the 
number of pounds of coal at one end and the number of kilowatt 
hours generated at the other. With no knowledge of the heat- 
ing value of coal used, nor the number of B. t. u. consumed per 
kilowatt hour, nor even of the mechanical efficiency of the 
equipment, we shall not be any the wiser as to the stage of the 
whole process in which the loss occurs, nor how big it is. We 
ought to know precisely how much is lost in certain steps of the 
transformation of energy from one form into another." 

The engineer will get some ideas on sensible power cost 
bookkeeping if he will study the nurse's daily chart the next 
time he is laid up in the hospital. The nurse is careful to 
record every fact relating to the patient's condition in which 
the doctor is interested. She brushes the patient's teeth and 
trims his toe nails, but she does not encumber the chart with 
these inconsequential details. She writes down only what 
the doctor wants to know and when the physician arrives 
he looks at the chart before he looks at the patient. 

There are engineers who make a careful record of every- 
thing without regard to what is important and what is not. 
Such bookkeeping is laborious, expensive and to a large extent 
useless. There are other engineers who never make a record 
of anything. The sensible practice as to bookkeeping lies 
between the two extremes. 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 



75 



RECORDS OF MAINTENANCE 

fate , 


BOILER 


TUBES BLOWN 


MUD BLOWN 


CUT 
OUT 


CUT- 
IN 


WASHED SCAUREMOVED 


I 




















2 










3 










A- 












COMBUSTION 
CHAMBER CLEANED 


CO/VD/TIO/V OF 


COtVD. OF 
BFIOK WOf^K 


COSVO. OF 
BLOW OFF 


f 










2 










3 










A- 










RFR4/R5 NEE DELL 


~> 




























SO/L-ER SUPT 



I shall not attempt to outline any system of power house 
bookkeeping. The records that you do employ, to be of use, 
must be to the point and reach the spot. Whatever else they 
may show, they should indicate the causes of waste and 
measure the effects. They should keep the physical condition 
of the boiler plant constantly before the Engineer and Man- 
ager. There should be records of maintenance as well as 
records of operation. If you will make some one man per- 
sonally responsible for the physical condition of your furnaces 
and boilers and require signed reports on blanks furnished, 
you will not be bothered with soot and scale, with broken 
down baffles or with leaks in the brick work of the boiler 
settings. 

Where nobody reports to anybody about anything and 
nobody is made responsible for anything, nothing need be 
expected because nobody is interested. 

The illustration on next page is not an exaggeration. The 
boiler is not covered and the setting is disintegrating. You 
can actually find boilers and settings in that condition. The 



76 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




boilers in your plant are covered, of course, but there are 
leaks in the settings, as serious in the aggregate, perhaps, as 
those shown in the picture. I visited a large power plant in 
Brooklyn and the brick work of the boiler was in worse 
shape than the horrible example at which you are looking. 
They were "expecting to re-set the boilers" at some time in 
the indefinite future and hence they did not consider it worth 
while to do anything to "those old settings." A few dollars' 
worth of material and a few more dollars' worth of time 
would have calked the settings of the ten boilers and the 
firm would have made about 100 per cent a day on the 
investment. 

It is much the same old story wherever you may go visit- 
ing power plants. Conditions exist in the boiler room that 
would not be permitted in any other department of the factory. 
Hence the waste of a quarter of the fuel. 

By what criterion shall the efficiency of a furnace be 
judged? 

THAT FURNACE IS THE MOST EFFICIENT WHICH 
COMPLETELY CONSUMES THE COMBUSTIBLE WITH 
THE LEAST SURPLUS OF AIR. 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 77 

Here we have the whole thing in a very small nut-shell. 
No matter where we start or in which direction we proceed, 
whether we consider the subject of drafts, of fuels, of methods 
of firing or what not, it is just a question of complete com- 
bustion with the minimum of air. Fix this in your mind and 
much of the "mystery" will fall away from the combustion 
problems that have been troubling you. 

Flue gas analysis answers every question bearing upon 
the efficiency of the furnace proper, but it tells us absolutely 
nothing about boiler efficiency. No other form of furnace test 
ever has been or ever will be devised to supersede it. The 
furnace exists solely for the gases that are delivered from 
it, as it is from these heat laden gases that the boiler derives 
the energy necessary to its functions. Every judgment upon 
furnace efficiency must therefore be based upon an inquiry 
into the furnace gases. I can prove it by scripture. The 
gases are the fruits of the furnace and "By their fruits ye 
shall know them." 

When it is suggested that a test should be run upon the 
boiler furnace the engineer by force of habit begins to think 
of the standard evaporation test because it is the only test 
with which most engineers are familiar. There can be no 
quarrel with this test if it is a complete one and properly 
conducted. It is incomplete unless sufficient combustion facts 
are gathered to enable us to judge the furnace as a thing quite 
apart from the boiler. The boiler has nothing to do with 
combustion and the furnace has nothing to do with evapora- 
tion. You do not burn coal in the boiler nor evaporate water 
in the furnace. Hence when we are considering furnace 
efficiency alone, no question as to water evaporated should 
enter the problem and add its complications. 

The business of the furnace is to transform the heat 
energy contained in the coal — to change it from the latent to 
the active condition and to deliver it in such condition 
undiluted and unmodified to the boiler. 

The business of the boiler is to take the heat energy from 
the carrier gases and make steam with it. We may have a 
very efficient furnace delivering heat energy to a very inef- 
ficient boiler. The furnace is not to blame for the character 



78 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

or physical condition of the boiler. The only exception that 
must be made to this statement relates to soot deposits and 
in many cases these deposits are the fault of the boiler and not 
of the furnace. 

There was a time when furnaces and stokers were sold 
under specified guaranties of evaporation. The wonder is 
that manufacturers ever stood for such an unfair method of 
judging their products. The leading furnace and stoker 
people are getting away from it and refusing to assume 
responsibility for the boilers that they do not furnish. They 
are guaranteeing furnace performance without reference to 
evaporation and the efficiency of the furnace is determined by 
an examination of the gases that it passes along to the boiler. 
This is the oniy fair method and the only scientific one. 

You do not try on your coat to determine whether your 
pants fit, and if the pants are too long in the legs you do 
not remedy the trouble by cutting off your coat tails. Pants 
are a part of a suit of clothes, just as a furnace is a part 
of a steam generating plant and as the study we are about 
to make relates primarily to the furnace we will leave the 
boiler out of it as far as it is possible to do so. The subject 
of boiler scale is of such compelling importance that I have 
been tempted to deal with it here in connection with furnace 
problems. I am precluded by lack of space from doing so. 
We will stick to the furnace proper as far as possible. We are 
forced, however, to consider the subject of air dilution at all 
points between the furnace and the chimney and we must 
also take the question of the "short-circuiting" of the gases 
into account. It is quite impossible to make a proper combus- 
tion study without considering the physical state of the walls 
that enclose the boiler and of the baffles that direct the flow 
of the gases through the boiler. For the purposes of this 
study we will consider the boiler damper and everything 
except the naked boiler itself as a part of the furnace. 

The efficiency of the furnace depends upon the efficiency 
of combustion within the furnace and the safeguarding of 
the gases -from outside influences until they have left the 
heating surfaces of the boiler. Now it is quite impossible for 
anyone to look at a boiler and furnace and pronounce a 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 79 

definite judgment upon the efficiency of either of them. We 
can tell in a general way whether combustion is efficient or 
inefficient by observing the color of the flame and noting the 
condition of the fuel in the furnace, but the judgment of the 
observer might be 10 or 20 per cent at fault. The fuel itself 
has much to do with appearances in the furnace. What 
applies to one fuel and one furnace will not apply at all to 
another. And even if it were possible to look at a furnace and 
say, "This furnace is doing absolutely all that can be expected 
of it," it would be quite impossible to say that the boiler was 
having a fair chance at the hot gases delivered by the furnace. 
There are four large water tube boilers in the sub-base- 
men of a well-known New York office building. Three of these 
boilers were good steamers. The fourth was a shirker. Its 
furnace received as much attention as the others. The boiler 
walls and baffling were carefully looked after. The tubes 
were known to be clean of soot and scale. But the boiler just 
balked and wouldn't steam, and what ailed it was a problem. 
The gases leaving that boiler were finally examined with a 
Flue Gas Analyzer and it was found that they carried a high 
percentage of excess air. It was a mystery where this excess 
was getting access to the boiler. The engineer was willing 
to swear that there were no air leaks anywhere about the 
boiler and the analyzer declared there was a big air leak 
somewhere. The boiler was shut down and the engineer 
crawled into the combustion chamber, where he found the 
trouble. It had been the practice at one time to sluice the 
ashes through a 12-inch conduit which extended from the 
ash pit back under the combustion chamber to the rear of 
the boiler. Another method of ash handling had been 
adopted and the conduit was forgotten. It had been broken 
through by some laborer when cleaning out the combustion 
chamber and the result was an air leak into the combustion 
chamber 12 inches in diameter. 

Many stories having a similar bearing upon the subject 
could be related. If there is more than 40 per cent excess 
air in the gases as they leave the heating surfaces of the 
boiler, something is wrong somewhere. An exception must 
be entered to this rule if the coal contains an abnormal per- 



80 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

centage of ash or if the ash has a disposition to fuse at low 
temperature. In such circumstances it is impossible to burn 
the coal effectively with as little as 40 per cent air excess. 
It has been estimated that when the coal carries 40 per cent 
ash the efficiency of the heat unit is zero. 

Let us now tackle one of your boilers and make an exact 
diagnosis of the combustion troubles which afflict efficiency. 
We shall require the following apparatus: 

1. Some tallow candles. 

2. A flue gas analyzer. 

3. A sensitive differential draft gage. 

4. A high temperature thermometer or pyrometer. 

We will begin our study with the analyzer and we shall 
need a piece of one-eighth or one-quarter-inch gas pipe long 
enough to reach the center of the gas "flow" at the place 
where the gases leave the heating surfaces of the boiler. 

In another chapter I have discussed Gas Analyzers and 
other forms of testing apparatus, explaining the principles 
upon which they depend and the methods of operation. As to 
the requisites of an Analyzer for making a study of furnace 
conditions I will merely say here that speed is absolutely 
essential. The conditions in the furnace may change from 
instant to instant and when a sample of gas is taken for 
analysis, all of the conditions obtaining when the sample is 
drawn must be observed and a record made of them, other- 
wise we shall be unable to interpret the real meaning of any 
analysis we may make. For example, we want to know the 
effect that the slightest change in the draft will have upon 
the volume of excess air flowing through the furnace. We 
wish to make five or six tests as close together as possible, 
varying the draft for each test. Now the excess of air will 
be affected by changes in the condition of the fuel on the 
grates as well as by changes of the draft. As the fuel burns 
down the resistance to the passage of the air will be less and 
a small fissure may form in the fuel bed at any moment, 
letting in quite a volume of air. This would, of course, affect 
the result and we should have no means of knowing whether 
the change in the volume of excess air indicated by the 
Analyzer was due to the change in the draft or the change in 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 81 

the conditions in the furnace. Hence speed in operating the 
Gas Analyzer is a requisite of the highest importance when we 
are diagnosing furnace conditions. Failure to appreciate this 
fact has led to many wrong conclusions by engineers and some 
of them have formed quite erroneous impressions of the value 
of flue gas analysis on account of it. 

The gas sample should be taken from the point where the 
gases leave the heating surfaces of the boiler. It should be 
taken from the center of the gas flow at that point and it 
should be taken through a length of ordinary one-eighth or 
one-quarter inch iron gas pipe. Under no circumstances use 
a perforated pipe. If you take the gas sample at any other 
place or in any other way, you will not get the information 
you are after. I must make the reasons for these suggestions 
as clear as possible, because it is by disregarding them that 
the beginner with the Gas Analyzer makes his first mistakes. 

The sample should be taken at a point where the gases 
leave the heating surfaces of the boiler because you wish to 
catch all of the air leakage that is really affecting efficiency. 
Any outside air that may find its way into the boiler passes 
between that point and the furnace will reduce efficiency. 
If your gas sample is taken from the first pass of the boiler 
you will miss all of the air that is flowing into the second 
and third passes. The reading of the analyzer would tell 
you the extent of air dilution in the first pass, but nothing 
about the final condition of the gases, and it is the final condi- 
tion that you are after. For the same reasons it would be 
the very worst of bad practice to take the gas sample from 
the breeching or any other point beyond the heating surfaces 
of the boiler. It is quite certain that there are air leaks 
around the breeching connection and quite likely through 
the seams of the breeching itself. If the sample is taken 
from the first pass the analysis may indicate much less 
damaging excess than really exists and if taken from the 
breeching it is almost sure to indicate a great deal more. 

The temperature of the escaping flue gases should be 
taken at the same point where the gas sample is obtained and 
for the same reasons. You want to know how hot the gases 
are when they leave the boiler, not how hot they may be after 



82 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

they have chilled down hy radiation and air leakage beyond 
the boiler. 

Air leakage into the breeching will not lower the efficiency 
of the boiler in ordinary circumstances. Under certain con- 
ditions it might improve efficiency by cutting down the draft 
as the tendency in most boiler plants is to use too much draft. 

I visited a power plant not long ago and found an evap- 
oration test in progress. Gas samples were being drawn regu- 
larly into a bottle at one hour intervals and carried to the 
laboratory, where they were carefully analyzed by the plant 
chemist. He was very careful to determine the exact per- 
centages of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide), 2 (Oxygen) and CO 
^Carbon Monoxide). The boys were going to work out a heat 
balance at the conclusion of the test and to this end they 
were very anxious that the gas analyses should be made 
just right. The weights of coal burned from hour to hour 
and the reports of the water and steam flow meters indicated 
a very high efficiency, while the chemist's reports on the gas 
samples indicated a low efficiency — a very large volume of 
excess air. They couldn't understand it. The man in charge 
of the test had forgotten more about electrical engineering 
than I will ever know, but he didn't know the "A. B. C." of 
practical flue gas analysis. "What do you think of that G 
per cent CO2?" he asked me. I was forced to tell him that it 
was "rotten" and that he ought to be getting about 14 per 
cent. "I will give you five dollars," he said, "if you will 
show me how to make that Roney stoker do any better than 
it is doing right now." We looked at the fires and they were 
dazzling white. We looked at them through smoked glasses 
and there was no sign of an air leak in the fuel bed any- 
where. "I can't show you how to work a Roney stoker," I 
said, "but I can show you something about analyzing flue 
gases. From what point are you taking the gas samples?" 
"Why," said he, "from the uptake of the boiler, of course; 
from what point would you take them?" 

We got a ladder and climbed to the top of the boiler. 
The gas samples were being drawn from the uptake, above 
the boiler damper and about 12 feet above the drums of the 
boiler. There was more air going in around the hood of 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 83 

that uptake than was being taken through the fuel on 
the grates of the stoker. The gas samples over which his 
chemist was working with such great care to insure exact 
determinations were utterly worthless. We then took a gas. 
sample from the last pass of the boiler and the very first 
reading showed more than 15 per cent CO2, indicating an 
air excess in the last pass of less than 40 per cent, while the 
samples taken from the uptake were showing an air excess 
of nearly 250 per cent. 

One gas sample per hour is very little better than no gatf 
sample at all. It was not enough to indicate an average. To 
indicate anything approaching the real average the samples 
should be taken as often as once every five minutes and it 
would be better to have a continuous sample. The conditions 
in the furnace affecting the flue gases are not constant, even 
with the best types of stokers. 

Don't forget this: The gas sample must be taken at the 
point where the gases leave the heating surfaces of the boiler, 
wherever that point may be. Where that point may be 
located and how you are going to reach it with a piece of gas 
pipe, will depend upon the type of your boiler. 

Remember the boiler damper when you are placing the 
Sampling Tube. The gas currents may be deflected by the 
damper and leave the Sampling Tube in a dead air space. 
The tube must be in the gas currents, whatever the position 
of the damper, and it must be so located that it will be in 
the gas currents for all positions of the damper. 

If it is a boiler of the "B. & W." type you can thrust the 
gas pipe through the top "blow hole" at the last pass and let 
the pipe rest upon the boiler tubes. If it is of the "Heine" 
type you can run the gas pipe through one of the hollow 
stay bolt holes. If it is a return tubular boiler you can re- 
move the top "handle" from one of the boiler doors. This will 
provide a hole through which the gas pipe may be passed* 
and you must be sure that you are not getting any of the air 
that leaks around the boiler doors into the smoke box. The 
gases will leave the boiler tubes and rise in a curve to the 
uptake. Between these curving gas currents and the boiler 
doors there will be a current of air on its way to the uptake 



84 Hotv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 





Incorrect positions of the sampling" tube. 




'X" shows the correct location for gas sampling pipe — "Y" and 
"Z" the incorrect locations. The points marked "ALT show 
some of the places where air leakage is likely to be found. If 
the "baffling" is in bad condition the gases may "short- 
circuit," as shown by the arrows "S" "S." 



and the volume of the air stream will depend upon the amount 
of the air leakage around the boiler doors. Your gas pipe 
must pass through this stream of air and its open end must 



Hoiv to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 85 

be in the gas currents. In ordinary circumstances the pipe 
should extend to within about six inches of the boiler head? 
and it should be above the top row of tubes. If the pipe 
should be thrust in too far it might extend beyond the curving 
flow of the gas currents .and enter a "dead air" space. Be 
certain that you are getting none of that air leakage around 1 
the boiler doors. If you are not certain, stop the leaks tem- 
porarily and if this is impracticable insert the gas pipe in one 
of the boiler tubes as the next best expedient. This will give 
you gas from but one of the boiler tubes and you want a 
composite sample from as many of the tubes as possible- 
I have found by experiment, however, that an analysis of the 
gas taken from one tube will compare very closely with that 
of a sample taken in the preferred way. as above indicated, 
provided the tube selected is near the center of the boiler. 
If there is much air leakage between the arch at the rear of 
the boiler and the boiler head, a sample taken from one of 
the top row of tubes might show more excess than a sample 
taken lower down, as most of the air flowing in at the arch 
would find its way into the top row of tubes. 

Many years ago somebody suggested the use of a per- 
forated metal pipe for gas sampling purposes. It was pro- 
posed that a gas pipe long enough to extend entirely across 
the boiler should be used, that this pipe should be capped 
or plugged at the end and perforated with small holes at 
measured intervals — the theory being that when suction was* 
applied to the pipe each of the holes would furnish its quota 
of gas and that the sample secured would represent an average 
of the gases flowing through the cross section of the boiler 
pass in which the pipe was extended. The use of such a pipe 
is to be condemned for the following reasons: 

1st. Gas will flow along the lines of least resistance. 
The nearest hole will furnish more gas than the next one and 
so on down the line. Unless the suction applied is very 
strong the chances are that the bulk of the gas, if not all of it. 
will be drawn through the first hole. If the rate of gas 
suction is very slow, as for example, when a gas collecting 
device is used, one lone hole in the perforated pipe would be 
more than ample to supply all of the gas taken. 



86 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency, 

2nd. Some of the small holes in the perforated pipe are 
quite certain to be stopped with soot accumulations and one 
would have nc means of knowing when • such stoppage had 
occurred nor which holes had been affected. 

3rd. The velocity of the gas flow decreases from the 
center of the boiler pass toward the sides, so that even if it 
were possible to secure uniformity of gas flow through all 
of the perforations in the tube, the sample deri.ed would 
not be an average one. Assuming such uniformity of flow, 
the hole drawing from the slow moving gas current would 
supply as much gas as the one drawing from the fast mo ring 
gases. This would make the "average" secured a false one 
and as the gases near the sides of the boiler carry more of 
an air excess than those at the center, the sample would be 
rendered falser still. 

4th. There is no sense in taking a cross sectional sample 
from side to side of the boiler pass unless you add to this 
sample another cross-sectional one extending longitudinally 
with the boiler from baffle to baffle. If there is any merit at 
all in the perforated pipe there should be at least one opening 
for every square foot of space throughout a horizontal cross- 
section of the entire pass of the boiler. 

It is quite impossible to secure an absolutely correct aver- 
age sample of gas through any pipe or any nest of pipes that 
could be devised. It is my opinion, and I base it upon a great 
deal of experimenting, that a better sample can be secured 
through an ordinary gas pipe opening at the center of the gas 
■flow, than in any other manner. The gases are reasonably 
well mixed when they arrive at the exit of the last pass. 
They have been tumbled up and down among the boiler tubes, 
and the point of best mixture is the point of greatest velocity, 
viz., at the center of the gas flow. You will find greater varia- 
tions in the CO2 content of the gases at the center of the flow 
% an at any other part of the pass. If taking samples at that 
point you can tell from the analysis when the furnace doors 
are open for stoking, when an air hole develops in the fuel 
bed and what the exact effect of the slightest change in the 
draft may be. Everything that happens to affect efficiency is 
reported by the gases having the greatest velocity, i. e., the 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 87 

gases at the center of the flow and as you move away from 
the center towards the sides of the pass or towards the baffles, 
the variations will be less and less pronounced and when you 
reach a point very near the side walls there will be prac- 
tically no variations at all. 

Several years ago I received a letter from the Chief 
Engineer of a cotton mill. He stated that he was using a 
perforated sampling pipe and that he was unable to get more 
than 2 per cent CO2. I told him to throw the perforated 
thing away and to go to the center of the last pass with a 
piece of common pipe. He did so and reported 13 per cent 
CO2. The first hole in his perforated pipe had furnished all 
of the gas and the gas that it furnished was principally air 
that had seeped through the brick work of the setting. 

Flue gas analysis as a means of determining furnace 
efficiency has been condemned by a great many well meaning 
engineers. They have taken the gas sample from the uptake 
or some other place, not the right one. They have used a 
perforated tube or they have done something else not in 
accord with good practice. They have not secured results 
and hence they condemn the whole proposition. I have yet 
to learn of a single instance where satisfactory results in the 
actual reduction of fuel bills were not secured when the right 
methods were followed. 

Having learned what sort of a sampling pipe to use and 
where to place it, the next step is to connect the Gas Analyzer 
by means of its flexible rubber hose with the sampling pipe. 
Drive a nail into the brick work of the boiler setting or 
wherever you wish to hang the Analyzer and see that the 
instrument is at a proper height to facilitate ease in opera- 
tion. Don't stand it inconveniently on a box or a barrel. 
You must work rapidly when you get started, because you 
are out after useful data. You must make 50 or more CO2 
determinations per hour and at the end of an hour you ought 
to have the goods on the furnace and the fireman. 

Your next step is to connect the differential draft gage, 
and I must digress here to say something about drafts and 
draft measurements. 

Owners and engineers of power plants are frequently 



88 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

heard complaining about the "draft" and saying all manner 
of unkind things about the chimney. Most steam plants suf- 
fer from too much draft rather than from too little of it. 
If you have draft troubles look for the causes of them in the 
boiler room before you blame the chimney. What you label 
"lack of stack capacity" may, perhaps, be more properly 
labeled "lack of engineering sagacity." You probably have 
chimney enough and draft enough. What you need is draft 
conservation. 

By way of making clear what I am trying to convey let me 
present an illustration. Let us suppose a farmer who wishes 
to take a load of grain to market. He has been out in the 
field with a wagon picking up "nigger heads" and other 
stony impediments to cultivation. He gathers just about all 
that the horses can draw but the load does not fill the wagon 
box. He wants to take some grain to market. Being a lazy 
individual and being in a hurry to get to town and cash in 
on his grain, he does not unload the "nigger heads." He 
piles the grain in on top of them and of course he gets stuck 
in a sand pocket going up Sugar Creek hill. I submit that 
it would not be fair in such a case to blame the horses. The 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should get 
after the farmer and a commission to determine lunacy should 
sit on him. Undoubtedly both of these things would happen. 

Good engineering is just good horse sense. When the 
capacity of either a horse or a chimney to do useful work is 
reduced by the performance of useless work, somebody is not 
exercising horse sense. 

I have investigated a great many cases where "poor draft" 
was alleged and in most instances I have found the chimney 
pulling about five tons of "nigger head" ballast for every ton 
of real cargo. And in nearly every case it has been possible 
to greatly increase the effective draft by throwing out the 
ballast. In some cases it has been necessary to make certain 
alterations in the flue connections, but in very few cases has 
it been necessary to do anything to the chimney proper beyond 
ordinary repairs. 

We are told that it requires eleven and a half pounds of 
air to burn a pound of "coal," or around 23,000 pounds for 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 89 

each short ton of coal. The draft must raise this weight to 
the top of the chimney and in addition it must raise the com- 
bustible portions of your coal, for the oxygen of the air unites 
with the carbon of the coal to form the gas CO2, and the 
hydrogen of the coal unites with oxygen to form water vapor, 
H2O. The total weight that the draft must raise in the per- 
formance of useful work is therefore around 25,000 pounds for 
each ton of coal consumed, or 2,500,000 foot pounds if your 
chimney is 100 feet high. 

Now suppose that the flue gases show 5 per cent CO2, 
which in all probability is about what they do show. This 
means that added to the weight of 25,000 pounds which the 
chimney must lift there is an excess ballast of "nigger heads" 
weighing right at 72,220 pounds, to be lifted also. The chim- 
ney under such circumstances would be doing enough work 
to carry three plants like yours at full capacity and with 
maximum economy. And yet the owner of such an overworked 
and uselessly worked chimney is persuaded that there is 
something wrong with it. He spends a lot of money for 
more boilers and chimneys with the result that his fuel bills 
go up instead of down, because he has to buy still more coal 
to heat still more air. 

The only thing that draft knows is to burn fuel and if 
you have too much draft after the new chimney has been 
built or after you have thrown out the ballast and given the 
old one a chance, you must throttle this draft as you throttle 
the steam at the engine. Your throttle is the boiler damper. 

Excess draft increases your fuel wastes in several ways. 
It increases the rate at which you burn the coal without a 
commensurate increase in the rate of evaporation. The heat 
of some of the extra coal that you burn is nullified by some 
of the excess air that is drawn in by the excess draft. The 
velocity of the gases is probably increased and in such case 
the boiler has less time in which to absorb the heat energy. 
The stack temperatures are higher. You lose at both ends 
and the middle. 

A proper draft gage is an important boiler room appliance. 
It measures the actual draft used, but it cannot tell you the 
draft that you ought to use. It is like the scales the druggist 



90 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

employs. These tell him the weights of the drugs he is 
measuring out, but they do not write prescriptions. The Gas 
Analyzer prescribes the draft that should be employed. The 
draft that will give you complete combustion and carry your 
load with the least excess of air is the draft to be used always. 
The Gas Analyzer measures the completeness of combustion 
and the excess of air. 

Engineers persist in connecting their draft gages at the 
uptakes of their boiler furnaces. In this case, as in many 
others, the common practice is the wrong practice. Suppose 
you wish to know the water pressure in the supply pipes of 
your residence. Where do you measure that pressure? Do 
you measure it at the pumping station of the water company 
where it originates or do you measure it at the faucet in your 
kitchen, where the effective pressure is expressed? The rate 
at which you burn your fuel in the furnace depends upon the 
rate at which you apply air to it, and this rate, so far as a 
draft gage can measure it, is fixed by the draft in the furnace. 
The place to measure drafts, accordingly, is the boiler fur- 
nace where the draft is applied. Of course, if you burn your 
coal in the uptake of the boiler instead of in the furnace, it is 
another matter, and you may leave your draft gage, if you 
have one, connected at the uptake where it now is. 

The draft gage, it must be remembered, does not measure 
gas flow or gas velocities. It merely measures differences in 
pressure — the pressure of the atmosphere on the outside and 
the something less than atmospheric pressure on the inside of 
the furnace. Under normal conditions, viz., when the fires 
are clean and of uniform thickness, when the furnace doors 
are closed and the ash-pit doors open, the draft gage may 
tell us something about gas velocities — the greater the draft 
the greater the velocity. Now suppose we close the ash-pit 
doors — what happens? The draft, as indicated by the gage 
will be increased, but the movement of the gases will be 
decreased because we have shut off the supply of air. If the 
air is entirely excluded there will be no movement at all and 
hence no velocity whatever. On the other hand, if we open 
the furnace door air will rush in and move with considerable 
velocity through the furnace and the boiler. But the gage 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 91 

will show that there is less draft — less difference in pressure 
than before the doors were opened. Velocity may be either 
directly or indirectly proportional to the draft as indicated 
by a differential pressure gage. 

What causes chimney draft? The force that is trying to 
go up the stack is stronger than the force that is trying to 
come down the stack. Hence there is a movement up the 
stack and draft is a "push" and not a "pull" as is commonly 
supposed and as its name implies. 

Suppose, by way of illustrating the physical cause of draft, 
that we take a glass tube and insert it in a bottle of oil. By 
closing the tube with the finger we can lift out a tube full 
of oil Let us next insert the oil filled tube in a vessel of 
water and remove the finger. Water will flow in at the bottom 
of the tube and push out the oil. The water, in seeking its level 
exerts an upward pressure in the bottom of the tube that is 
greater than the downward pressure of the oil. Oil being 
lighter than water will rise to the surface of the water. 

Let us suppose again that the oil filled tube is 6 inches 
long and that we push it down in the water before remov- 
ing the finger until the lower end of the tube is 3 feet under 
water. We shall then have a downward pressure at the 
bottom of the tube of 2 feet 6 inches of water plus 6 inches 
of oil and an upward pressure of 3 feet of water. This 
would make the net upward pressure at the bottom of the tube 
exactly equal the difference between the weight of the oil in 
the tube and that of a corresponding 6-inch tube full of water. 

Oil is Jighter than water. Hot gas is lighter than cold 
gas. Air is a mixture of gases. Your hundred-foot chimney 
full of hot gas stands at the bottom of a sea of air some 50 
miles deep. Precisely as in the case of the water and the oil, 
the net upward pressure at the bottom of the chimney exactly 
equals the difference between the weight of the column of 
hot light gas in the chimney and that of a like column of 
cold heavy air outside the chimney. And as the barometric 
pressure varies your draft will vary also. It is strange how 
many people there are who do not clearly understand these 
simple draft phenomena. If everybody understood them there 



92 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

would be far less money spent for new chimneys and far 
less kicking about drafts. 

"Nature abhors a vacuum" and tries her best to destroy 
one. There is a partial vacuum inside your boiler furnace 
and all the way from the furnace to the top of the stack. 
Nature tries to destroy that vacuum and incidentally to 
destroy your draft by shoving cold air into it, through the 
fuel bed in the furnace, through crevices and cracks about 
the furnace, through cracks in the brick work of the setting, 
through the pores of the bricks themselves, through air holes 
around the headers at both ends of the boiler, through leaks 
in the flue connections and breeching and through cracks 
and leaks in the chimney. The way to fix nature is to fix 
these air leaks. 

A steel chimney will radiate more heat than a brick or 
tile one and loss of heat means loss of draft. When putting 
up a chimney it will pay you to put up a little more money 
and get a real one. In the ideal chimney the temperature at 
the top of the stack will closely approximate that at the bot- 
tom. The steel chimney is a radiator and it takes the heat out 
of the gases as they travel through it, thereby impairing the 
draft to the extent of the heat robbery. 

If you will do the square thing by your chimney and give 
it a show — forcing it to perform useful work only — you will 
find that most of your draft trouble has disappeared and that 
the large expense you have been dreading incident to a new 
chimney or a higher one may be avoided. 

And having decided to give your chimney a fair show why 
not stop playing favorites with your boilers? Why do you 
have so much affection for the boiler nearest the stack and so 
little for the one farthest from it? Don't you know that 
some of your boilers get more than their share of the draft 
provided by the chimney and that others get less than their 
share of it? This isn't fair, either to yourself or to your 
boilers. It costs fuel and adds to your troubles with the 
smoke inspector. It gives you as many combustion problems 
as you have boilers and furnace drafts. Why, a farmer's boy 
knows enough to make his plow horses pull together. Drive 
your boilers the way the boy drives his horses. First find out 



How to "Spot" Yoitr Fuel Wastes. 



Spend your vacation on the farm next sum- 
mer and learn something about steam engi- 
neering-. 




fOOfiHOBSt* 



No two of them pulling- alike. That's no way to work the 
horses. It's just the way you work your boilers. 




M 




FQURHORSSS 

DEVELOPING 

FOUR K. P. 



Make your horses pull tog-ether. Work your boilers in the 
same manner. 



94 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

what draft you ought to use in your boiler furnaces. This 
draft, as 1 have stated, is the one that will produce the highest 
percentage of CO2 without combustible CO and carry your 
load. You have a draft gage for each boiler or ought to have. 
They are not expensive. After learning the draft that you 
ought to use, you can equalize the draft by setting the indi- 
vidual boiler dampers. I have known eight boilers to do the 
work that ten were doing before, after draft equalization. If a 
furnace has too much draft there will be a fuel loss due to 
heating excess air. If it has too little draft there will be a fuel 
loss on account of the CO which is due to a deficiency of air. 

Draft gages are of great assistance to the fireman. They 
enable him to give each boiler furnace the exact draft that 
it should have — the standard draft for the plant, whatever that 
draft may be. They enable him to spot the fire that is getting 
in bad condition. The gage will show an increased draft 
when the fires are too thick or are becoming dirty. It will 
show a decreased draft when the fires are too thin or when 
they are burning full of cracks and holes. The gage when 
properly connected will show the draft loss between the 
uptake and the boiler furnace. If the loss is less than normal, 
you will know that something has happened to reduce the 
friction in the boiler passes, that the baffling has burned out 
or has broken down and that the gases are short-circuiting. 
If the draft loss is more than normal you will know that 
something has happened to increase friction, that there are 
deposits of soot and ash upon the tubes and perhaps slag, soot 
and ash accumulations upon the baffles and the brick work of 
the setting. These deposits upon the tubes affect both the 
efficiency and capacity of the boiler by resisting the passage 
of heat energy from the gases to the water in the boiler. 
They make the chimney work harder to give the required 
draft to the furnace. And they will be found among the 
chickens that come home to roost once a month upon the 
coal bill. 

When your boiler efficiency refuses to "fish" look at the 
heating surfaces. 



CHAPTER IV. 
HOW TO STOP YOUR FUEL WASTES. 

' It is one thing to "spot" a waste and another to stop it. 
The apparatus for spotting was mentioned in the last chapter. 
For stopping the losses you require what is known as "Spiz- 
zerinktum." This is a state of mind — a mental self-starting 
device that enables you to get going without waiting for 
somebody to come along and crank up your motor. 

Give the man who is loaded with "Spizzerinktum" a good 
steer and that is all he requires. He will square his shoulders, 
tuck in his shirt-tail and go to it. But the man who is not 
loaded with it — his case is hopeless. You might give him a 
whole herd of steers and other long-horned cattle and it 
wouldn't help him. You might kick him in the gluteus 
maximus* every five minutes and it wouldn't hurry him. It 
takes that sort of chap about ten hours by the stop watch to 
pass a given point on any proposition. "Some men are slower 
than the wrath of Jehu."*** 

Show me an engineer who lacks "Spizzerinktum" and I 
will show you a plant so low down in the scale of efficiency 
that you will have to look up when you visit it to see bottom. 

Not long ago a plant Manager said to me, "We have 
bought every imaginable kind of testing and recording appa- 
ratus for our power department and none of it is used regu- 
larly. I believe that considerable might be accomplished if 
our engineer would take some interest and get busy. He is 
always just going to turn things upside down, but he never 
gets started." There is only one thing to do with that kind 
of a man. Tie a can to him and send him down south of the 
Rio Grande into the "manana"** country to herd with the 
Greasers. 

Men who are accustomed to visiting power plants will 
tell you that the reason most plants are so low in efficiency 
is that the men in charge of them and the men back of the 
men in charge lack "Spizzerinktum." 

*Latin for "caboose." 

**Mexican for "watchful waiting." 

***R. B. Whitacre. 



96 Hoic to Build Uj) Furnace Efficiency. 

We will now get busy with the "spotting" apparatus 
mentioned in the last chapter. 

The manufacturer of whom you purchased your draft 
gages has surely provided you with explicit directions for 
connecting the gages with the boiler furnaces. If he has not 
done so he ought not to be in the business of making gages. 
We will assume that the gage is properly connected and that 
everything is ready. We will assume also that the boiler to 
be tested is one of the "B. & W." type. 




Differential Draft Gage (Designed by the Author) 

W. B. IT IS NECESSARY, IX THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW, 
TO ILLUSTRATE SOME OF THE APPARATUS REQUIRED IX 
MAKING COMBUSTION TESTS. ALL OF THE APPARATUS 
ILLUSTRATED WAS DESIGNED BY THE AUTHOR AND IN 
SHOWING IT HE DOES NOT INTEND NOR DESIRE TO 
DISPARAGE ANY OTHER APPARATUS OF SIMILAR CHAR- 
ACTER. 

You shove the gas pipe, selected in Chapter II, through 
the top blow hole of the last pass of the boiler and I ask you 
as you do so to note whether the pipe has the "feel" of con- 
tacting with clean metal or with something that is soft 
and dirty. 

I was talking one time with the engineer of a very mod- 
ern power plant in the very modern city of Minneapolis. We 
got around to soot and the engineer said, "I will show you 
that we keep our boiler tubes clean." He raised the slide 
over one of the blow holes at the first pass of the boiler. 
There was a good light from the furnace just below the tubes 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 97 

and we had a fair view of them. They were reasonably- 
clean. We then went to the back pass of the boiler, but there 
was no light from the furnace there and we could not see 
anything. I asked for an electric flash light and the engineer 
said that he could steal one "off" the night watchman. While 
he was gone in search of it I found a piece of gas pipe about 
six feet long and thrust this through each of the blow holes 
of the last pass and across the tubes of the boiler. I could 
tell from the "feel" of the pipe that there was a surprise in 
store for my engineer friend. His flash light showed furrows 
an inch deep in soot where I had plowed with the gas pipe 
across the tops of the tubes. 

Now it was evident that the man who had blown those 
tubes had not finished the job. He had blown the soot 
from the first pass back into the second pass and the double 
dose of soot from there back into the third. Then he had 
stopped to rest, or to look at a dog fight, or to visit the can* 
or for some other purpose. At any rate, he had not finished his 
work. Now if things like that can happen in well regulated 
plants what can we expect to find in plants that are not 
regulated at all? 

I have seen boiler tubes entirely covered with soot, so 
thick in places that the spaces between the tubes were actually 
bridged over. And the boiler room men really went through 
the motions from time to time of blowing the soot from the 
tubes. They didn't do the job properly at any time. Prob- 
ably the nasty features of the work had something to do 
with the slovenliness of its performance. To clean off soot 
properly all of it should be blown off all of the tubes. To 
blow it from one locality to another doesn't help much. It 
is no uncommon thing to find soot so thickly packed into the 
corners and along the side walls of water tube boilers that 
you could use a hoe and shovel in removing it. 

In non-conducting properties, soot has been proved to be 
five times as effective as fine asbestos. It is one of the most 
effective of all known non-conductors. You want your boiler 
tubes to conduct heat as rapidly as possible to the water 



*Water bucket. 



98 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

within the tubes. If you want to keep up steam when the soot 
piles up you will have to pile in more coal. 

And don't think for a moment that there is no occasion 
to use your soot blower because you make no smoke. If 
your furnaces never smoke at all there can be little, if any, 
soot upon the tubes, but there can be a great deal of fine 
ash, even from anthracite coal. Do you know how much fine 
ash was removed from the combustion chambers of your 
boilers the last time they were cleaned? There were wagon 
loads of it, most likely. Every bit of it was carried over from 
the furnace by the gases. And if that quantity of ash was 
carried through the tubes it is reasonable to presume that 
some of it landed on the tubes. 

If you are fixed to blow the tubes economically by a per- 
manent installation of blowers, don't be scared of blowing 
them too frequently. Two or three times a day will be none 
too often. Whenever you see smoke coming from your chim- 
ney, think of the deposit it is leaving upon the tubes. There 
is mighty little of real fuel value in black smoke, probably 
not to exceed 2 per cent of the fuel at the extreme figure in 
the extremest smoke. This has been proved many tims by 
the use of soot traps and by analysis of the smoke. And yet 
the smoke may cause a loss of many times 2 per cent. The 
loss is not in the soot that goes up the chimney. It is in the 
soot that sticks to the tubes and does not go up the chimney. 

And a bad thing about soot on the tubes is that if you do 
not get it off it is liable to .bake there .and if this happens 
very serious trouble may result. I recall one case of a return 
tubular boiler that will serve as an example of carbonaceous 
scale. There was almost a quarter of an inch of it baked on 
the tubes. On reaming out one of the tubes a leak was 
developed and the boiler inspector condemned all of the tubes. 
The leak was due to the corrosive action of the sulphur baked 
on with the soot. When the tubes were removed the majority 
of them were found to be pitted. 

Air leaks about boiler settings get on my nerves because 
there is no excuse whatever for them. You do not have to 
be told that they are bad for efficiency. Soot gets on my 
nerves for the same reason. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



99 



Of course, if you want soot, why, suit yourself. And help 
yourself liberally to it. There is plenty of it. 

Before you start work with the Gas Analyzer get a piece 
of chalk and a foot rule and borrow the fireman's wide-bladed 
hoe. Chalk a scale in inches on the hoe blade. You can then 
set the hoe blade up on edge on the furnace grates and tell 
exactly how thick the fuel may be on the grates. Next have 
the engineer draw a sample of gas and determine the per- 

Showing about how the temperatures 

drop in the boiler passes when the 

heating surfaces are clean. 




The only heat that 

counts is the heat 

that gets into the 

WATER 



100 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

centage of CO2. While he is pumping the gas sample, read 
the draft gage and while he is analyzing the sample, look in 
the furnace and note the condition of the "fire," especially as 
regards the state of the fuel on the grates. Make a careful 
memorandum of whatever you see and note especially whether 
the coal is evenly distributed or all "hills and hollows." 
And look for cracks and thin places in the fuel bed. And don't 
forget to look in the corners at the front of the furnace. You 
may find bare spots there and you are almost sure to find 
one just back of the brick work between the furnace doors. It 
is a little difficult to get fuel on these places because it is 
ftard to throw coal around a corner and the fireman is likely 
to slide over anything that is hard to do. 

If it is a stoker instead of a hand-fired furnace you will 
make the same sort of observation to detect air leaks. Instead 
of looking for air leaks in the corners you will look in the 
iioppers and instead of looking through the furnace door you 
will look through the observation door. Everything that I am 
raying about hand-fired furnaces applies in one way or another 
to automatic stokers. The stoker has this advantage among 
others over a hand-fired furnace — you do not have to open 
the furnace door and let in a lot of cold air when you are 
putting in the coal. The hand-fired furnace has this advan- 
tage over the stoker: When the fire needs anything you can 
see what it needs and where it needs it and you can give it 
what it needs. If the boilers are set in battery, guess work 
must very largely prevail in looking after the stokers. The 
stoker requires attention the same as the hand-fired furnace 
and it requires a higher order of intelligence. Of course, there 
are stokers and stokers, but whatever type of stoker you may 
iiave you must not make the mistake of thinking that it will 
take care of itself. One of the most efficient plants I ever saw 
was hand-fired and one of the most wasteful was stoker-fired. 
If you will permit me to pick the stoker and the stoker attend- 
ant I will back the machine against hand-firing. 

Furnace efficiency depends upon little things and many 
of them. One little thing may not mean much, but many of 
them mean a waste of one-quarter of your fuel. There is no 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 101 

place to draw the line on these little things. You must 
observe all of them. 

Now, if when inspecting conditions in the furnace, you 
find that the coal is evenly distributed, set up the hoe that,' 
you have calibrated and determine the thickness of the fuet^ 
bed. Do this from time to time as the test proceeds. If- 
the coal is not evenly distributed, you cannot, of course,, 
measure the fuel thickness. 

While you have been inspecting the furnace the engineer- 
has been analyzing and he now reports, let us say, 5 per 
cent CO2. Before you proceed further be dead sure that the 
gas sample was properly taken. Is the open end of the gas 
pipe at the center of the gas flow in the last pass? You know 
how the baffles are arranged in the boiler and where they 
are located. You can judge about how the gases will flow 
from the bottom of the last baffle to the gas exit from the 
boiler. You can find the approximate center of the gas flow, 
if you are uncertain about it, by probing for it with the gas 
pipe and working the Analyzer. The center is the place where 
you get the highest CO2 and the most pronounced fluctuations 
in the percentages. If you get uniformly low percentages 
and there are no marked changes when the furnace doors are 
opened and closed, it may be that the baffling has broken 
down or some other abnormal circumstance has short-cir- 
cuited the gas currents out of their normal channels. 

Now, what does this 5 per cent CO2 mean? And why are 
we getting 5 per cent instead of 14 or 15? 

The CO 2 percentage indicates the volume of excess air 
flowing through the furnace, and the passes of the boiler— 
the ratio between the air that is taken for a useful purpose 
in burning the coal and that which is taken to the wasteful 
end of cooling the furnace gases. That is all that it does 
indicate and its indications are only approximations. We 
might determine the air excess much more accurately by find- 
ing the percentage of free Oxygen with the Gas AnalyzeF. 
The objection to the Oxygen analysis is that it takes time 
and we do not have the time for it. We want data and I 
have already shown how essential speed is to securing that 
data. Some of it will get away from us if we do not work 



102 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

the Analyzer about once a minute. It will take Ave minutes 
to determine the Oxygen. When you work the C0 2 per- 
centage up to 12 or 15 it will be time enough to analyze for 
Oxygen and CO. Don't spend a minute on those gases until 
you do. 

Why does the CO^ percentage indicate the excess air? 

The air normally carries about 20.7 per cent Oxygen by 
volume. When Oxygen combines with Carbon in the reaction 
<of combustion, both the Oxygen and the Carbon disappear as 
such. The solid Carbon unites with the gas, Oxygen, and 
another gas results which the chemist has labeled "CO2." 
He resorts to the formula because it tells him precisely of 
what the gas is composed — that it is one part Carbon (C), 
and two parts Oxygen (Oo). And moreover, the chemist is 
too blamed lazy to write out the full name of the gas, "Carbon 
Dioxide." 

It is a curious fact that when we take a given volume of 
Oxygen and add to it a given bulk of coal, Carbon, to form 
CO2, the resulting gas exactly equals the volume of the 
original Oxygen. Here is a case where we can take a pail 
full of fluid and add a solid to it without overflowing the 




Hoiv to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



103 



pail. I must ask you to accept this established fact as "gos- 
pel" because the space is lacking to explain it. 

Now, remembering that the air contains 20.7 per cent 
Oxygen, let us consider an illustration: 

Suppose we have a quart of milk that is 20,7: pex^eeat-, 
cream. We add a quart of water and our twos quart mixture 
is 10.35 per cent cream. There is the same quantity: of ereamt 
as in the first instance, but the diluting waters reduces the 
percentage of the cream in terms of the -total- milk and water 
mixture. If we add two more quarts of water, giving us four 
quarts of weak milk in all, the mixture will be 5.175 per cent 
cream. The water excess would be three times the original 




> of I 




milk and cream volume, or 300 per cent. If you do not under- 
stand this thing your milkman will explain it to you. Dou- 
bling the air supply works the same mathematics on CO2 that 
doubling the water added works on cream. 

It should now be understood why the lower we go in 
the scale of CO 2 the greater will be the waste that the drop 
of each succeeding per cent indicates. For example, if we 
drop from 16 per cent CO2 to 10 per cent, the loss due to this 
drop of 6 per cent will be around 6 per cent in fuel r while the 
loss in dropping from 10 per cent to 6 per cent is near 12 per 
cent in fuel, and in dropping from 6 per cent to 2 per cent 
the loss is 57 per cent of the fuel. Theoretically the loss 
becomes total at 1.5 per cent CO2, the volume of excess air 
heated being then so great that it would be impossible to 
boil the water in the boiler. The charts and tables presented 



104 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

will show the COo and excess air relations in a more graphic 
and detailed manner. 

It must be remembered that all such charts and tables 
are based upon an assumed set of conditions. In the present 
instance the fuel is assumed to be pure Carbon, which fuel 
never is, and the stack temperatures are assumed to be con- 
stant at 500 deg. Fahr., which they never are. The higher 
the stack temperatures the hotter we are heating the excess 
air and the hotter we make it the more fuel we are wasting. 

It is not pretended that any engineer can actually com- 
pute his gains and losses from the table submitted or that 
the figures given indicate the excess air in any instance. As 
stated, the table applies to pure Carbon only. With such 
fuel the theoretical COo would be 20.7 per cent by volume. 
When a bituminous coal is burned the theoretical COo will 
be less, depending upon the percentage of Hydrogen in the 
combustible, probably somewhere between 17 and 19 per 
cent, as against 20.7 per cent.* 

The fuel waste in your plant may be more or less than 
the figures given in the table, but it will not be very far from 
them. They will serve as a sufficiently accurate guide for all 
practical purposes and you may, if you wish, base a bonus 
system upon them and reward your firemen according to 
their CO2 charts. 

Instead of presenting many tables applying to many coals, 
I therefore present but one, and it, as I have stated, applies 
to straight Carbon. 

I could not give you a table that would exactly apply to 
your coal because I do not know what coal you are burning 
and, lacking an analysis showing the relative percentages of 
Carbon, Hydrogen and Sulphur, I could not give you a table 
even if I knew the origin of the coal. And even if you con- 
tract for coal of a definite. B. t. u. value and definite ash 
content, you will not know short of a daily coal analysis 
whether you are or are not getting the coal for which you 
contracted. When you adopt the modern method of paying for 
heat units instead of for fuel by the ton you will come nearer 



♦See the charts in the Appendix relating to bituminous 
coal, fuel oil and gas. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



105 



getting what you pay for. Until you do adopt that method, 
you can just roll up your pious eyes when you see the coal 
wagon coming and pray that there may be a few heat units 
in it. 

The table assumes the fuel to be pure Carbon and that 
the temperature of the escaping gases is constant at 500 deg. 
Fahrenheit. On this assumption the loss would become total 
at a fraction above 1.5 per cent C0 2 . The table also assumes 
the entire absence of CO. 



CO 



Pet. Pre- 
ventable 
Pet. Fuel 

CO2 Loss 

15 0.0 

14.8... 0.148 

14.6 0.305 

14.4. 0.470 

14.2 0.635 

14.0 0.808 

13.8 0.990 

13.6 1.17 

13.4.... 1.36 

13.2 1.54 

13.0 1.75 

12.8 1.95 

12.6 2.16 

12.4 2.38 

12.2 2.60 

12.0 2.84 

11.8... 3.08 

11.6 3.33 

11.4 3.59 

11.2 3.86 

11.0 4.13 

10.8 ...4.43 

10.6 4.72 

10.4 5.03 

10.2 5.35 



> AND FUEL LOSSES. 








Pet. Pre- 




Pet. Pre- 




ventable 




ventable 


Pet. 


Fuel 


Pet. 


Fuel 


C0 2 


Loss 


C0 2 


Loss 


10.0. . . 


5.69 


5.0... 

4.8... 


22.79 


9.8... 


6.04 


24.21 


9.6... 


6.40 


4.6... 


......25.76 


9.4... 


6.78 

7.18 


4.4. . . 


27.44 


9.2.. 


4.2... 


29.29 


9.0. . . 


7.58 


4.0... 
3.8... 
3.6... 


31.28 


8.8 . . . 


8.02 


33.58 


8.6... 


8.47 


36.08 


8.4... 


8.95 


3.4... 


38.87 


8.2... 


9.44 

9.66 


3.2.. . 


42.01 


8.0... 


3.0... 


45.28 


7.8... 


10.51 


2.8... 


49.64 


7.6... 


11.09 


2.6... 


54.34 


7.4... 


11.70 


2.4... 


60.32 


7.2... 


12.34 


2.2... 


66.30 


7.0... 


13.02 


2.0... 


74.00 


6.8... 


13.74 


1.8... 


83.56 


6.6... 


14.49 


1.6... 


95.45 


6.4... 


15.30 


1.4 




6.2... 


16.16 


1.2 




6.0... 


17.09 


1.0 




5.8... 


18.06 


.8 




5.6... 


19.12 


. .6 




5.4... 


20.25 


.4 




5.2... 


21.47 


.2 





106 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

It is plain that the temperature would not remain constant 
— that it would decrease both at the furnace and the exit of the 
boiler with the decrease in CO-. While the fall in temperature 
would affect the table, it may be stated that the figures given 
will very closely apply in actual practice where the fuel used 
is a low volatile, high carbon coal. 

The table further assumes that 15 per cent CO2 is the 
limit beyond which it is not safe to go in good practice. 
There is a loss of 3.1 per cent due to excess air between 15 
per cent and the theoretical limit of 20.7 per cent CO2, which 
the author has presumed to figure as non-preventable. 
CO L . and AIR EXCESS. 
Pet. CO-. Pet. Air Excess. Pet. CO_>. Pet. Air Excess. 
15 38. 

14 47.8 

13 59.2 

12 72.5 

11 88.1 

10 107. 

9 130. 

8 158.7 

7 195.7 

To determine the percentage of excess air for any given 
percentage of CO2, as for example, 5.4 per cent, proceed as 
follows: 

Subtract the observed percentage (in this case 5.4) from 
20.7, divide the remainder by the observed percentage and 
multiply by 100. This gives the volume of excess air. At 
5.4 per cent COo the excess air is 283.33 per cent. In' rough 
figures the preventable fuel waste may be computed by allow- 
ing 1 per cent of fuel loss for each 12 per cent of air excess 
above 38 per cent. This figure is quite as accurate as the one 
commonly applied to feed water, viz., 1 per cent of the fuel 
lost or gained for a change of temperature in the feed water 
of 10 degrees. 

But to return to the specific problems before us in testing 
the gases from your furnace and "B. & W." boiler. 
What did the 5 per cent CO2 mean? 
It meant that you were heating 314 per cent excess air 



6 


245 


5 


314 


4 


417 


3 


590 


2 


935 


1 


1970 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



107 



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108 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

and that you were uselessly wasting 22.79 per cent of your 
fuel; that for every 100 cubic feet of air that you were using 
to burn the coal you were taking in and heating to the tem- 
perature of the uptake gases an additional 314 cubic feet. 
You were using in one boiler furnace almost enough air to 
operate three of them. 

Now, if we can find why and where the excess air is 
getting in, we will know the exact reason for the fuel waste 
and we can devise a remedy. The draft gage says that there 
is a negative pressure, or a "draft" of 21 hundredths of an 
inch over the fire in the furnace. I am just assuming that 
draft for the purpose of the illustration. The draft might be 
anything. 

We now turn to the fireman, the favored fellow who is 
trusted to handle your money with a scoop shovel. He has 
been making steam without thinking. We must wind up his 
"think" clock and set it ticking. 

He has been putting some more coal on the fire and we 
catch him in the act of closing the furnace door. We say 
to him : 

"Why did you shut the furnace door? Why not leave it 
open? Why not take the thing off altogether and sell it for 
old iron? Every time you close the door you have to open it 
again. This takes time and means work and may burn your 
fingers." 

The fireman looks at us quizzically. He thinks we are 
joking him. We press him for an answer and he delivers a 
pointed lecture on the economies of combuston. 

"Do you see that steam gage up there?" he asks us. "Well, 
it is my business to keep the arrow pointing at 100 pounds. 
How long could I hold steam if I did not close the door? 
The cold air would rush in and cool off the furnace. Every- 
body knows that. Sure, you must be 'joshing' me to ask such 
a fool question." 

And so we see that the fireman knows about the damaging 
effects of cold air. The trouble with the fireman is that 
he does not continue his line of thinking and apply his cold 
air theories to the thin places and the holes in his fire. 

We explain to him that the Gas Analyzer is an instru- 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



109 



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110 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

ment for measuring the cold air that is going through his 
furnace and he immediately understands what the curious 
looking thing, that he has been eyeing with suspicion, has 
to do with his work. We now call his attention to the cracks 
and holes in the fuel bed and force him to admit that cold 
air is flowing through them, also that the cold air so taken 
is just as damaging to steam and efficiency as the cold air 
that flows through the open fire door. We ask him to take a 
light rake and level off the fuel. To do so he must break up 
the islands of coke and close the cracks and air holes. When 
he has finished we take the "calibrated" fire hoe and discover 
that the "fire" is four inches thick. We also note that stopping 
the air leaks has jumped the draft from 21 hundredths of an 
inch to something higher, say 30 hundredths. We try the Gas 
Analyzer at once and it reports 7 per cent CCK Referring 
to the table above we find that the air excess has been reduced 
from 314 per cent to 195.7 per cent. Subtracting the last figure 
from the first one we find that we stopped an air excess of 
118.3 per cent by raking the fire and closing the cracks. We 
reduced the fuel loss from 22.79 per cent to 13.02 per cent. 
We take great pains to explain this to the fireman and we 
make him admit that the fire is now in better condition than 
before he raked it. 

The Analyzer has told us that we are on the right track 
but that we still have some distance to travel. There are no 
cracks in the fuel now, but we are not getting enough CO?. 
Possibly the fuel is a little thin for the draft that is being 
applied to it. The thinner the fuel the easier it is for the 
draft to pull excess air through it. On this assumption we 
have the fireman thicken the fuel bed gradually, measuring 
it at intervals with the hoe. We get as high as 8 per cent 
CO2 and there we stick. We have a "peach" of a fire but we 
connot push the air excess any lower. 

We next move the gas pipe sampling tube to the middle 
blow hole of the first pass of the boiler and take a sample. 
We must grab this sample very quickly because when the 
tube is heated to an oxidizing state it will take oxygen 
from the gases we are pumping through it and this will 
affect the result of our analysis. We find 14 per cent CO2, 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. Ill 

under the same furnace conditions that had been giving us 
8 per cent at the last pass of the boiler. There is a thun- 
dering leakage of air between the first sampling point and 
the last one — 110.9 per cent. We now go after that boiler 
setting with the candles. We find leaks at all of the localities 
suggested in the previous chapters. The leaks about the 
headers into the first pass are particularly serious. We get 
none of this last mentioned leakage when sampling from the 
first pass because the sampling tube was toward the rear of 
the pass and the cold air was flowing in at the front of the 
pass. It did not mix with the gases until the second pass was 
reached. We got the full returns from it in the last pass, 
together with that of all the rest of the air leakage about the 
boiler setting, which the candles tell us must be considerable. 

We go after these air leaks now with an understanding of 
what they really mean to efficiency and we keep after them 
until two snap-shot gas samples, taken one at each of the 
extreme boiler passes with the least possible intervening 
time , show the same percentage of CO2. When you learn 
how rapidly the gases change within certain limits you will 
understand why speed in the operation of the Analyzer is 
necessary if you wish to accumulate data. 

When we know that the setting is properly tight it will 
be just a question of pursuing the study until we find the 
exact conditions of draft, fuel thickness, etc., that will yield 
from 14 to 15 per cent CO2. When we find these conditions 
we have "arrived" and it is just a question of keeping at it 
until we do find them. The process of finding is one of 
"cutting and fitting and trying.' 1 

A few years ago a committee was appointed by an 
engineering society to investigate CO2 Recorders. It re- 
ported adversely and cited the fact that an increase in CO2 
was usually followed by a rise in stack temperatures. Hence 
it reasoned that high CO2 did not indicate efficiency, but the 
contrary, and that all "COo Apparatus" was to be avoided as 
promoting waste rather than efficiency. 

The "Chimney Waste" cannot be determined from the 
uptake temperatures alone nor from those temperatures con- 
sidered in relation to the initial furnace temperatures. The 



112 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

pyrometer does not count heat units. It measures intensity 
Avithout regard to quantity. A pint of water at the boiling 
point contains far less heat than a barrel of water at a far 
lower temperature. And so as regards chimney temperatures 
it makes a lot of difference whether the pyrometer is report- 
ing on a pint of gas or a barrel of it. The heat loss in the 
uptake is determined by multiplying the temperature into the 
quantity of air and gases heated. You can stand a reasonable 
increase in uptake temperatures as you rise in the CO2 scale 
because you are reducing the quantity heated faster than you 
are increasing the temperature. 

A Chicago engineer complained that he could not get 14 
per cent COo without shutting down his plant. It was found 
that he reduced the draft to increase the CO2, and of course 
in doing so he reduced the steaming capacity of his boilers. 
Now had he followed the method indicated in this Chapter he 
would have obtained an increased capacity. Had he stopped 
the air leaks and improved the conditions in his furnaces he 
would have raised the CO2 and he would have had steam 
to sell. 

There is a relation between the draft that should be used 
and the resistance of the fuel on the grates. I have taken as 
high as 16 per cent COj with no more than a trace of CO 
from marine boilers under forced draft during a speed trial 
at sea. The idea that high C0 2 calls for low draft is one of 
the many fictions current relating to combustion analysis. 
You can get high CO2 with any draft in reason, either high 
or low, provided the draft and the fuel resistance are in 
proper relation. 

Bear in mind that the C0 2 percentage indicates the ratio 
of the air used to the air that has not been used. 

I can get 18 per cent CO2 from a stinking old tobacco 
pipe that is one of my prized possessions, but if I should 
take the fire out of that pipe and put it under a boiler I 
couldn't get any steam with it. 

"Your steam plant is operated for the purpose of running 
your power plant and not for the purpose of making CO2." 
Why, sure. I admit it. And if you do the right thing by that 
steam plant the more CO2 you make the more steam you will 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 113 

get from unit quantity of fuel and the more steam you make 
the less unit quantity of fuel you will burn. 

These propositions have gone past the point where they 
require defense. They are proved propositions. The physical 
laws that govern combustion take sides with them. 

The CO2 percentage is an index of efficiency and not of 
capacity, although, as I have shown, it may be taken as a 
measure of capacity if the draft is not decreased to secure 
the increase in the CO2. But however the increase in the 
CO2 is attained, it is a measure of efficiency — the volume of 
heat-nullifying cold air taken in comparison with the volume 
of heated gas developed by the process of combustion. 

Everything that I have said so far is based upon the 
assumption that there is no CO accompanying the COo. 

When the air supply is insufficient or improperly distrib- 
uted, there will not be enough Oxygen to convert all of the 
Carbon to CO2. Some of it will have to be satisfied with one 
part of Oxygen instead of two parts. The Carbon will be 
half burned and CO will result. CO is the "Bob-tail flush" 
of combustion. 

When Carbon is burned to CO 2, 14,500 units of heat 
energy are released in the furnace. When it is burned to 
CO, 4,400 heat units are released and the remaining 10,100 
continue unreleased in the CO and with it ride up the chimney. 
So that when we are basing a judgment as to efficiency upon 
CO2 percentages we must know whether or not CO is present 
and if it exists we must qualify our judgment. 

There is as much Carbon in a molecule of CO as in a 
molecule of COo, so that if the gases show 9 per cent CO2 
and 1 per cent CO, 90 per cent of the combustible has been 
completely burned and 10 per cent partly burned. This 10 
per cent carries away 10,100 heat units per pound of Carbon 
taken out of an original 14,500, so that the actual fuel loss 
represented by the CO in such case would be 10, 000-14, 500ths 
of 10 per cent. From this statement you will be able to see 
how the following formula is derived: 

To find the loss due to CO in percentage terms of total 
Carbon burned divide the percentage of CO by the sum of the 



114 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

COo and CO percentages, multiply by 100, divide by 145 and 
multiply by 101. 

Applying this formula to a case of 9 per cent CO2, and 
1 per cent CO, we find that the fuel loss due to the CO is 
C.9 per cent. 

There has been much discussion in the engineering jour- 
nals as to the relative importance of the CO2 and CO deter- 
minations in flue gas analysis. Some engineers even go so 
far as to recommend an analysis for CO every time the CO2 
determination is made. The main objection to this is that it 
takes a lot of time and means a lot of really unnecessary 
work. The sensible method is to first find out how to secure 
the desired percentage of CO? and then to check the gas 
sample for CO. It will be found in most cases that when the 
COo percentage has been made right the Oxygen and CO will 
fall into line and be right also. Of what concern is it to us 
if CO does in fact exist with a low percentage of CO2, say 6 
per cent? We don't want the CO, of course, neither do we 
want the 6 per cent CO2, consequently we are not concerned 
to find the reason why CO exists when we have 6 per cent 
CO2. We want 14 per cent CO2 if we can get it, and we want 
no CO with that 14 per cent. We might stand for a trace of it, 
but not for much more. To wipe out the undesired CO it may- 
be necessary to increase the excess of air and thereby lower 
the CO2. But the CO may not owe its presence to lack of air. 
It may be due to lack of mixture or certain other causes that 
will land us in rather deep theory if we attempt to consider 
them.* 

Low CO2 may be caused by lack of air as well as by 
a surplus of it, but the surplus is the cause in almost every 
instance. Whatever the cause for a drop in CO2 the furnace 
temperature will drop with it. We may find CO with any 
percentage of CO2. Suppose that the "fire" is very thick 
and perhaps "dirty" in one portion of the furnace. This con- 
dition would result in the formation of CO because not enough 
air could pass through the thick and dirty "fire" to reduce the 
Carbon to CO2. Now if there are air leaks in the fuel on 



*See page 181. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 115 

other portions of the grate a large excess of air would be 
passed through them and we should have CO in the flue gases 
in the presence of an excess of air. 

I have heard it stated that we cannot get more than 8 
or 10 per cent CO2 without inviting CO in considerable quan- 
tity, but this is not in accordance with my experience. I do- 
not consider that we are in much danger from Co until we 
have reached about 15 per cent CO 2. This statement is 
made upon the assumption that the boiler setting is tight and 
that there is sufficient draft for proper combustion. If the 
setting is leaky we might have to indulge in extremely thick 
"fires" to raise the CO2 percentage and this, as explained in 
the preceding paragraph, might produce CO while the air 
taken in through the setting would, of course, lower the C0 2 
percentage by diluting the gas volume. 

If we are engaged in experimental or research work we 
must concern ourselves, not only with the CO2, but with the 
CO and SO2 and with the Hydrogen and Methane as well. The 
operating engineer is not engaged in research investigations. 
He is engaged in making steam and he wants to make it as 
economically a spossible. His plant is not operated under test 
conditions, but under severe working conditions. Hence he 
must adopt in gas analysis, as in everything else, the methods 
that are applicable to the every-day grind of an every-day 
steam power plant. And he will secure amazing results if 
he will begin with CO2 and stick to CO2. I do not mean that 
he should never make CO investigations. I insist that he 
should make them, but that he should select the right time 
for doing so and that time will not arrive until he has first 
placed his furnaces upon a proper COo basis. 

It is a significant fact that some of the engineers who 
have accomplished the most with flue gas analysis, who have 
made savings as great as 40 and 50 per cent, have been non- 
technical men who have never gone farther in gas analysis 
than the CO2 determination. They have pursued air leaks 
and studied draft regulation. They have "taken chances" on 
CO and it is not likely that much of it is to be found in 
their furnace gases. And I would back one of these men 
every time for results in the boiler room against the man 



116 How to Build Up Fimwce Efficiency. 

who is all "technical"— who is a mile long on theory and an 
inch long on practice. When such a man gets into the boiler 
room he will begin with CO studies and he will have resort 
to formulas and other things that are mystifying. In other 
words, his work will be of a laboratory kind and of a research 
nature. And as a result of his methods a shroud of mystery 
will be thrown over the whole performance. Nobody in the 
fire room will take any interest in the thing, hence no benefit 
will result from it. 

It "will help very much if the engineer who is undertaking 
flue gas analysis will acquire some of the theory on which 
his practice is based — if he will learn a little of combustion 
chemistry, but it is not essential that he should know any- 
thing at all about the theory or the chemistry of it. It is 
essential that he should follow right methods and if he does 
this he will produce right results. 

The marksman need not know the chemical properties of 
the powder in the cartridge before making a bull's-eye. 
Neither is it necessary that an engineer or fireman should 
know what COo really is. or why it is, before he begins 
work with a Gas Analyzer. A man who can read a ther- 
mometer scale can read that of a Gas Analyzer and if he 
will keep after the Analyzer until he gets the right reading 
he will get results that will surprise everybody about the 
plant — most of all the Manager. 

Don't carry a sample of gas in a bottle from the boiler 
room to the laboratory. Make your study of furnace condi- 
tions right at the furnace and make enough determinations 
to acquire some real data. When you have finished your 
investigations in the boiler room, say at the end of an hour, 
or at most two hours, reduce your data relating to CO^ per- 
centages, fuel thicknesses and drafts, to curves upon a chart 
and this will serve to show the very relations you have been 
seeking to discover. Knowing these relations you may pro- 
ceed to standardize the operating methods in your boiler room 
and prescribe a rule of action for your firemen. 

I think it will now be plain how the answers to most of 
ihe questions proposed in the first chapter may be worked out. 

When you know how much fuel the furnace is wasting 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 11? 

by heating excess air, how much it is dropping in the ashpit 
and how much CO it is sending up the chimney, you come 1 
very near knowing the efficiency of that furnace. 

Employ the draft that will carry your load and produce 5 
the highest percentage of CO? without GO. You must deter- 
mine by actual experiment what that draft really is. With 
bituminous coal it will probably be in the neighborhood of 
30 hundredths of an inch over the fire. The more ash the coal 
contains the more draft you will have to use and the lower 
rhe maximum percentage of COj that you will be able to get,. 
Control the draft with the boiler damper rather than with the 
ash-pit doors. 

Calibrate all of your dampers. To do this connect a dilV- 
ferential draft gage between the damper and the boiler. Place 
the damper in the extreme closed position. Then open it 
gradually. Mark the position of the damper when the draft 
gage is first affected. Continue opening the damper until the 
gage stops registering an increment in the draft. Mark this 
position and adjust the damper to work between those two. 
positions. The slightest movement of the damper will then: 
register its effect at the furnace and the effect will be pro^ 
portional to the movement of the damper. You will meet 
some surprises when you calibrate your dampers. You will 
find in some cases that the damper is "wide open" when it is 
partly closed and in others that it is "partly closed" when 
it is wide open. A great deal will depend upon how the 
damper is hung and the direction of the normal gas flow 
with respect to the normal open position of the damper. It is 
of the highest importance that the main breeching damper 
should be calibrated before you hook it up to an automatic 
damper regulater. 

The advantages of a damper regulator are liable to be 
overestimated. A proper regulator will assist in securing 
economy. An improper one may actually increase the coal 
consumption, although it may produce a perfect steam curve 
on the chart of the recording gage. 

Regulators may be divided into two general classes for 
the purposes of this discussion: 

1. The machines that move the damper a little when 



118 How to Build Up Fttrnace Efficiency. 

there is a slight change in the steam pressure, the movement 
of. the damper heing proportional to the change in pressure. 
2. The machines that swing the damper from the wide 
open position to the closed one when the pressure rises and 
from the closed position to the wide open one when the 
pressure falls. 

Regulators of the second class do not always meet the 
requirements of economical combustion. When the damper is 
wide open the furnaces will be getting too much air and the 
percentage of COo will fall. When the damper is closed 
the furnaces will not get enough air and CO will be formed. 
Machines of the first class may not make as perfect a steam 
curve as those of the second, but they will show economy 
where the others may produce waste. 

To equalize the draft among the boilers, first see that the 
fires are all in standard condition — of the same thickness 
without air holes and free from clinkers. Then adjust the 
boilers' dampers so that all of the furnaces will have the 
same draft — your standard draft, whatever it may be. There- 
after you may regulate the draft to meet the load by shifting 
the main breeching damper. The draft will vary with changes 
of barometer, so that it may be necessary for the fireman to 
make certain damper adjustments every day, but these 
adjustments, so far as possible, should be confined to the 
master damper in the breeching and they will consist in 
altering the maximum open position of the damper for the day. 

I have shown how the air leakage through the setting may 
be measured by shifting the sampling pipe from the last pass 
to the first pass. Be sure that the fire is in good condition 
when the test is made and make the two determinations very 
close together, otherwise some condition affecting the air 
excess may intervene in the furnace and spoil the comparison. 
]f the fuel on the grates is peppered with thin spots and air 
holes, a sample taken from the first pass may be misleading. 
Suppose, for example, that there is a large air leak in the 
fuel bed immediately below the intake end of the sampling 
pipe. A tornado of air will rush up through it and the 
Analyzer will report low COo as a result of that air, whereas 
the actual average from the furnace might be a reasonably 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 119 

high percentage of CO2. And conversely, if you should take 
gas from a section of the furnace in which the fuel condi- 
tions were first class, while in all other sections they were 
poor, the report would be too high. Plug the air leaks in the 
setting and you will then have no occasion to measure the 
air flowing through them. 

The other questions relating to excess air may be an- 
swered by following the same general method of procedure. 

Don't neglect the marks on the liners of the furnace doors 
when you have learned how thick the particular coal you 
are burning should be carried on the particular grates you 
are using. 

The coal best adapted to your conditions is the coal that 
you can burn with the least surplus of air. You are limited, 
of course, by the fuels available in your market and you may 
be justified by price considerations in using the fuel not best 
adapted to your conditions. In planning a boiler plant the 
fuels available should receive more consideration than they 
are usually accorded and the equipment purchased should be 
selected with reference to the fuel that you ought to burn. 

Should the coal you are using be fired dry or wet for 
greatest efficiency? This will depend upon circumstances and 
the question will be answered by the Gas Analyzer. 

It takes heat units to evaporate the water that you have 
applied to the coal and the business of these heat units is 
to evaporate the water in the boiler. We must make an 
entry on the debit side of the ledger. 

When a shovelful of wet coal goes into the furnace, the 
first thing that happens is the evaporation of the surface 
moisture clinging to the coal. This is followed by the decom- 
position of the resulting steam into its elements, Oxygen and 
Hydrogen. The Hydrogen is next ignited and burns back 
again into water, returning to the furnace the exact amount 
of heat abstracted in the operation of decomposition. Some 
of this heat will be lost by radiation, more of it will be 
discarded to the chimney and some of the Hydrogen may 
escape without being consumed. There is, accordingly, a net 
loss by this operation. There is another debit. 

But there are credit entries also. Combustible gases are 



120 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

being evolved from the fuel. The Hydrogen flame assists 
in igniting them. When water and incandescent coke come 
into contact with each other there is an evolution of CO 
as well as of Hydrogen, the Oxygen of the water uniting 
with the Carbon of the coal to form Carbon Monoxide. This 
gas rises into the furnace chamber and burns with the 
Hydrogen. The area of combustion is extended and we have 
a flaming furnace through which no combustible gas can pass 
in the presence of Oxygen without burning. 

Fine coal, when thrown into the furnace, tends to "pack." 
particularly if it is dry and there is much ash and foreign 
matter in it. If it is wet. the water when it is converted 
into steam, will loosen the packed coal, permitting the air to 
flow more readily through it. As a result the coal will 
burn more uniformly and you will burn less of it because 
there will be less combustible in the ash and clinker and 
much less combustible carried over by the draft into the 
combustion chamber. There will be fewer cracks in the fuel 
bed and the coal will be burned with a great deal less 
excess of air. 

It is impossible to burn some fine coals without wetting 
them. You can burn any tine coal with better results and 
more satisfaction if you turn the hose on the coal pile. Do 
you prefer to smoke your cigars damp or kiln dried? 

The grate surface is just right for highest economy when 
you can carry a proper fire upon it without blowing off the 
safety valve. The fire is not proper if it is so thin that too 
much unused air will pass through it and if you have too 
much grate surface you will either have a great excess of 
air or a popping safety valve. 

Smoke is due to one of four causes or to a combination 
of two or more of them, viz: 

1. Lack of air; 2, lack of mixture; 3. lack of tempera- 
ture, and 4, lack of space. Now. before blowing yourself to 
steam jets or some other cure-all device for preventing 
smoke, it would be wise to discover why your chimney is 
smoking. 

If the boiler setting is tight and the gases show no more 
than 12 per cent CO?, there is an abundance of air and nothing 



Hoiv to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 121 

will result by admitting more of it except to lower efficiency. 

If the furnace is white hot there is plenty of temperature. 

If there is an abundance of air (free oxygen) in the gases 
and you find CO, the trouble is insufficient mixture. The 
air is being taken in at the wrong place, or the design of 
the furnace is such that the air taken is not caused to mix 
with the combustible gases. The difficulty may be remedied 
or ameliorated by the use of mixing piers or arches. 

Lack of space is probably the most common of all the 
causes of smoke. The grates must be at such a distance 
below the heating surfaces of the boiler that the flame will 
be burned out before the relatively cold metal is reached. 
Take any cold substance, a piece of glass, for instance, and 
hold it in the flame of a gas jet. There will be a deposit 
of carbon at once. If your smoke is caused by the snuffing 
Gut of the flame upon the cold surfaces of the boiler you will 
find very little CO in the gases, perhaps none whatever, 
although there may be a great quantity of soot. 

"Smoke means waste," of course, but as I have already 
pointed out, there is very little fuel value in the finely divided 
carbon that colors the chimney gases. A chimney that is 
making no smoke at all may be throwing out more actual 
combustible gas than one that is a bad smoker. 

But assuming that there is an appreciable quantity of real 
combustible in the chimney gases — we can eliminate it with- 
out sustaining a loss that exceeds the saving? If you save 
$2.00 by burning up the combustible gases and lose $4.00 by 
heating the excess air that is incidental to the process, how 
much of a gainer are you? To burn soft coal smokelessly is 
a simple matter, but to burn it smokelessly and at the same 
time economically is up another street altogether. If the 
men who are selling "smokeless furnaces" were compelled to 
put their devices up against a Gas Analyzer, nine-tenths of 
them would go out of business. 

There was a time when the Smoke Inspector was not con- 
cerned in the methods by which you attained smokelessness. 
You could equip with steam jets or any other make-shift, 
wasteful thing so long as you stopped violating the ordi- 
nances. And the result of this was that the Inspector was 



122 Hoiu to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

an Ishmael among the power producers. His hand was 
against every man and the hand of every man was against 
him. It is a cheerful sign that the times have changed when 
the Inspector now visits the plant in the role of a helper 
rather than that of a fault finder. He comes to advise and 
while he insists upon smokelessness, he wants to see you get 
smokelesness done up in a wrapper of efficiency. 

And don't assume that your boiler plant is efficient because 
your chimney is not smoking. Show me a chimney that 
never makes a trace of smoke and I will show you a plant 
that is not burning coal efficiently. 

The territory between no smoke — no combustible of any 
kind in the gases — and highest efficiency is fixed by very 
narrow boundary lines. Let us draw a horizontal line and 
consider it as lying in the plane of highest efficiency — com- 
plete combustion with the minimum supply of excess air. 
Above this line is the territory of unnecessary excess air, and 
below it the territory of air deficiency. The higher we go 
above this line the more of a "hot air factory" we are run- 
ning. The farther we go below it the more' smoke and CO 
we are making. If we remain in the neighborhood of the 
line, fluctuating furnace conditions will place us first on one 
side of it and then on the other. There will be periods of 
no smoke, succeeded by periods of slight smokiness. Con- 
ditions like this at the top of the chimney usually point to 
economical furnace operation. If there is no smoke at all 
we have no means of knowing by mere stack observation to 
what extent the furnace may be indulging in excess air. 

The Gas Analyzer will answer any strictly combustion 
question that may be propounded to it. It applies to Gas 
Producers and "Internal Combustion Motors," but its uses in 
these connections cannot here be considered by the author.* 

The higher the percentage of CO2, in the absence of CO, 
the higher the initial furnace temperature. And as a general 
proposition, the higher the furnace temperature the greater 
the efficiency. Extreme temperatures are destructive of brick 
work but they are not liable to damage the tubes or sheets 
of the boiler, provided there are no deposits of scale, mud, 



See Page 181. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



123 



^^ ^r-rr^ -^^y^^yrr^ 




2^rtx:3^r^^^^r~^ 





The way your H. R. T. Boiler is "set" and the wrong- way to set 
it — the grates 28 in. from the boiler shell and the combustion 
chamber partly filled in. You can't help smoking. 




w 



»■■* ' ' ' -T 





I I 1. ' 1 • t ' " 1 ' I. r~ T 



i::.-v\:*/^. 



E3 



The way your boiler should be set to burn bituminous coal — the 
grates about 48 in. from the boiler shell. A "roomy" com- 
bustion chamber. Note the flat arch at the rear.* 



*For a detailed discussion of smokeless furnaces see 
"Combustion and Smokeless Furnaces," by the Author. 



124 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

oil or other materials that will prevent intimate contact 
between the water and the metal. Some engineers are afraid 
of burning up their boilers, and boilers are sometimes 
"bagged" and burned, but the trouble can usually be traced 
to scale or oil. Why, you can take a paper oyster pail, 
fill it with water, set it in the blue flame of a gas burner 
and boil eggs without marking the paper except along the 
folds where the water is not in actual contact with the paper. 
If you will try this experiment you will cease to be afraid 
of high temperatures, but you will be more than ever afraid 
of scale and oil. You simply can't burn a clean boiler tube 
if there is water in actual contact with it. 

Some men are willing to spend a lot to 
save a little, but stick when it comes to 
spending: a little to save a lot. 



fc=^ 



\ 






The Draft Gage is a Compass by Which the Fireman Steers 
the Furnace. 

AVhen the liquid moves to the left, there are holes in the fire or 
the fires are burning- thin. When it moves to the right the fires 
are too thick or getting "dirty." The Draft Gage, when con- 
nected at the furnace and so located that it can be observed 
by the fireman, is an exceedingly useful boiler appurtenance. 
It gives instant notification when a hole forms in the fuel 
bed, when the fires are too thick or too thin, etc. The man 
soon learns to fire the furnaces or govern the stokers by it. 
The Draft Gage gives information of bad furnace conditions 
some minutes in advance of the steam gage. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



125 



High temperatures promote smokelessness, because tem- 
perature is one of the requisites of smokeless combustion. 
When the furnace salesman approaches you, find out how 
much COo he will guarantee without making CO — not how 
much water he will evaporate. If he guarantees high COo 
he is guaranteeing furnace efficiency and incidentally agree- 
ing to meet one of the conditions of smokeless combustion. 




JW 



!■" 







(Cartoon from Power Plant Engineering - .) 



S — stands for the STEAM you waste coal to produce 
And you waste the same steam when you put it to use. 



CHAPTER V. 
HOW TO KEEP THE WASTES STOPPED. 

When the levee breaks along the lower Mississippi they 
stop the leak with sand bags and niggers. And they stay 
on the job as long as there is high water., because it is one 
thing to stop a leak and another thing to keep it stopped. 
It is always high water in your boiler room. If you want 
fuel economy, first stop the fuel wastes and then sit on the 
stopper. It is one thing to attain efficiency and another 
thing to maintain it. If you kiss the fireman and say "good- 
bye" when you are through with your stopping operations, 
every waste, within the man's control, that you have killed 
will resurrect itself and renew its operations. 

I assisted in the "spotting" and stopping operations in an 
Ohio boiler room last November. We calked the boiler 
setting and jacked the CO : > up from 4 per cent to 14 per 
cent. We showed the fireman what the air leaks in the 
fuel bed had been doing to efficiency and we made him under- 
stand what we were saying. The meeting was adjourned 
after an interesting hour and a half and I returned to the 
office with the Manager. We talked for a little while and 
then I said, "I'll bet you five dollars we can go down to 
the boiler room right now and find the same old 'rat holes' 
in the fire." We caught the fireman unawares and we found 
them. It was laughable to see the way the man unlimbered 
himself to stop them. He had neglected to pull the calking 
out of the air holes in the boiler setting, which was prob- 
ably an oversight, for in every other particular he had 
reverted things to their original condition. My friend, the 
Manager, jettisoned his entire cargo of religion on the spot 
and swore like a mule driver. 

Neither the Manager nor the Engineer can stay in the 
boiler room and watch the fireman. Some means must be 
devised for keeping a check upon him. Human nature will 
do better work, no matter what the field of endeavor, if it 
is completely surrounded by some effective checking system. 
You know this and you have time clocks and various other 
checking devices in your factory. You check the output of 



Hotv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



127 



each man and machine, both as to quantity and quality. You 
inspect operations in the factory until you are black in the 
face, but the black-faced man in the boiler room knows that 
his operations will not receive inspection. Hence he is a 
careless and wasteful individual, just as I have described him 
and exactly as you know him. 

It takes some of the stuff that sustained the martyrs to 
deal with a fireman. It won't help to swear at him and 
refer to his ancestry. Neither will it serve to employ verbal 
chocolate caramels. The man has a lot of bad habits — that 
is all that ails him, and it may be as hard for him to quit 
them as it is for you to carry out your New Year's resolutions. 

You can make a real good fireman out of the poorest stick 
that ever held a shovel. It is just a matter of method, and 




Irate Engineer: I told you that we must have 125 pounds of 
steam for our engines and you are sitting here reading the 
newspaper while the steam is down to 40 pounds. 

Complacent Fireman: What the Divil! Ye wanted a hundred 
and twinty-foive pounds and Oi made it for ye. Use up the 
fahrty pounds that ye have lift and Ol'll make ye some more. 
Wot's t'e matter wid ye? 



128 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



I have promised to tell you about the methods that other 
men have found successful in dealing with their firemen. I 
have also promised to show how fuel waste may be stopped 
by the "fiat" of the Manager. It is up to me to make good 
in spite of the difficulties that I have just placed in my own 
pathway. 

If you want a really good fireman in short order, go and 
get a husky fellow that never fired a boiler. Start him right 
and he will think that there is just one way to do it. He 
won't know how to waste your fuel. Give me a green boy 
from the farm and I will turn him into an expert fireman 
in 48 hours. Ther*e is just that little to learn about the 
business. But you can't always raise your fireman from a 
pup. You may have to take whatever material you can find 
or whatever is sent you by the fireman's union. This is 
unfortunate, because it is easier to turn a new man into a 
real expert than it is to break an old fireman of just one bad, 
wasteful habit. 




Spend a little le.ss time in your office and a little more time 
in the Boiler Room. 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



129 



OLD NOAH'S STORY EXPLODED 
AT LAST 

"Can't Teach our Fireman Anything." 
iXoah to Shem, Ham and Japhet. 
COME OX, YOU WHITE HOPES! 



This ignorant Negro 
can neither read nor 
write. Of course, he 
knows nothing- about 
Chemistry, but he can 
fire a furnace to produce 
an average of 14 per cent 
CO* 

Following is a ver- 
batim report of an in- 
terview with him: 

"Bill, the boss says 
that you are a good fire- 
man and that he always 
gets a dandy Recorder 
card when you are on 
watch. Tell me how 
you do it?" 

"It done took me 20 
minutes learn how to fire 
when I learn wid de boss 
nigger. Fire light and 
quick, cover holes and 
watch de water. 

"Jess had good level 
fire all de time. Das 
wha made de card. 

"If jess steady load 
wha could carry fire, jess 
go up agin any one. 
Doan kar who it am." 




-BILL. 



130 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

Three steps must be taken to stop your fuel waste and 
institute economy, viz.: 

1. You must find the causes of loss and the means of 
stopping the losses. I have mentioned the apparatus and the 
methods of procedure. 

2. You must make sure that the fireman fully under- 
stands what is expected of him and you must have the means 
of checking the fireman. You must be able to tell each fire- 
man at the end of the day how much fuel he has saved by 
carrying out your instructions, or how much fuel he has 
wasted by disregarding them. Commendation, when merited, 
is quite as important as criticism. 

3. You must give the fireman some incentive to exert 
himself to the limit in the interest of efficiency. And the 
exertion called for does not mean extra labor for the fireman. 
It means less labor, but it also means increased care and 
watchfurness. 

Now how can you remain in your office and accomplish 
these three things by what I have termed your "fiat"? 

You can submit the 20 questions, suggested in the first 
chapter, to your engineer as a starter, and ask for a specific 
answer to each one of them. Your "fiat" will go that far and 
you can tell whether the engineer is "guessing" or answering. 




They're Making Fun of "Pete." 
He's the Lowest on the List. 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 131 

If he needs apparatus for testing purposes, your "fiat" will 
prevail with the purchasing agent. And after the apparatus 
has arrived you can say to the engineer, "Here are the tools 
with which you are to produce fuel economy. Get busy." 
And you can go and have a look and see if he is busy. No- 
body has the small-pox in your boiler room. It will be safe 
for you to go down there for a few minutes and watch these 
interesting "spotting" and stopping operations. 

And after the checking system has been instituted your 
"fiat" will bring the daily chart or daily report on the fire- 
men to your office. If it is not waiting for you in the morning 
you can send for the engineer and heat up the grid-iron. 

If it seems advisable to capitalize economy in your boiler 
room and make your firemen stockholders in the enterprise 
your "fiat" will establish a bonus system. If you do not want 



Finding' the Average 
Percentage of CO. 
at the End of the 
Watch. 

Each fireman's aver- 
age is posted on a 
bulletin board at 
the end of the, day. 
The man w h o m a k e s 
the best average 
leads the list. The 
averages for each 
shift are posted al- 
so. Fuel economy 
is thereby made a. 
sporting proposi- 

. . tion. There is riv- 
alry between the 
men i n d i v id u a 1 1 y 
and collectively. 
The result is much 
lower coal bills. 

Horizontal arrow in- 
dicates Gas Analyz- 
er and vertical ar- 
row .Gas Collector 

Using' a Gas Analyzer and Gas Collector to Determine How- 
Much Fuel the Fireman Wasted. The Figures Are 
an Excellent Stimulus When Placed Before Him. 




132 Hotv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

to pay a bonus, your "fiat" will place a blackboard in the 
boiler room on which the daily records of each man and 
each watch can be posted. The baseball score will be unable 
to compete with that blackboard for interest. When you play 
each watch against every other watch, and each fireman 
against every other fireman, fuel economy becomes a sporting 
proposition. Your ingenuity may suggest other expedients 
to increase the interest of the game — for example: You can 
put all of the white men on one watch and the niggers and the 
Irish on another. Being an Irishman myself I know that such 
division would lead to spirited competition. 

Fuel economy, Mr. Manager, must be instituted and 
maintained by your "fiat" and it cannot be instituted and 
maintained in any other manner. As explained in the first 
chapter, when I use the term "Manager" I am referring to 
the person who is the court of last resort on all matters 
pertaining to the power department — the man to whom the 
engineer must go when he wants to buy anything or to do 
anything out of the routine order. In some establishments, 
the Chief Engineer himself is this court of last resort, and in 
such cases he is the man to whom I am referring when I 
say "Manager." 

The "Manager," whoever he may be, must start things 
on the road to betterment and he can make betterment "stay 
put" when it is achieved by causing whatever checking system 
he may adopt to be treated as a part of the daily routine. 
No other method will get you anywhere. What applies to the 
establishment of any other factory reform or innovation, 
applies to this case also. 

How shall we check the "fireman" and make sure that he 
is really following the methods that will produce the most 
steam with the least fuel? 

Flue gas analysis serves two purposes in the boiler room, 

viz. : 

First: It points out the errors of furnace management. 
It locates the wastes of energy, assigns the causes and sug- 
gests the remedies. It assists in "building up" furnace 
efficiency. This building up operation is like any other one. 



Hoiv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 133 

It is a case of one brick upon another* until the structure is 
completed. 

Second: It serves as a check upon the furnace and the 
fireman and maintains the efficiency structure after the build- 
ing has been finished. 

I must not be understood to mean that combustion analysis? 
has no limitations in the good that it can accomplish in the 
boiler room. No furnace can be operated under ideal con- 
ditions, for reasons that are known to every operating en- 
gineer. The load fluctuates and the moods of the coal dealer 
are subject to changes. These things must be taken as they 
come and we must make the most of them. Many engineers 
take the following position and it seems to me quite unten- 
able: "With our ragged load line, our rotten coal and our 
poor firemen we are up against it and we can make no pre- 
tensions of economy. The methods recommended would work 
out very well in most plants but it would be useless to 
attempt them in ours." 

It seems to me that the harder the conditions are in the 
boiler room, the more important it is that an effort be made 
to correct them. The sicker you are the more you need the 
help of medicine. Suppose it is impossible to place your plant 
upon as high a plane of efficiency as that enjoyed by your 
neighbor? The savings actually possible to you may be far 
greater than your neighbor can make, and a dollar is a dollar 
wherever you find it. 

A few years ago I was called to a down-town plant in 
Chicago. It was mid-summer and there was very little use 
for steam. There was one large boiler in service and it was 
being operated at only about 20 per cent of its capacity. The 
boiler was served by a type of stoker that made a reduction 
of grate surface impossible. The plant needed a small 
boiler unit for the summer load, but it didn't have one. The 
flue gases were carrying only 2 per cent CO2, which you will 
find on reference to the charts and tables given elsewhere 
indicated a preventable loss of nearly three-quarters of the 
fuel burned. We were able to get 4 per cent with very little 
trouble and without lifting the safety valves, but we could 
not get more than that without blowing off steam. 



134 Hotv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The engineer said, "What's the use? I am as much 
ashamed of 4 per cent as 2 per cent." The use was just 
this: That 2 per cent increase in C0 2 meant a saving of 
about 43 per cent of the fuel, and while at 4 per cent there 
was still a waste of 31 per cent that he could not avoid, the 
43 per cent that he could stop was mighty well worth going 
after. 

Jf you are in the bad lands of engineering and you can get 
where the lands are not quite so bad, it is your duty to 
emigrate. You would be foolish to stay where you are just 
because you can't reach the land of Beulah. The best any- 
body can do is to do the best he can do and it is a foolish 
man who will not try at all because he knows the ideal is 
unattainable. 

I regard the simple hand manipulated Gas Analyzer as 
indispensable to the steam power plant. You can "build up" 
with it and when this has been done you can check the fireman 
with it, provided you have some satisfactory means of collect- 
ing an average gas sample. 

The instrument shown elsewhere was designed by the 
author expressly for the class of work in the boiler room 
that has been described in these pages. It is a modified form 
of the well known laboratory Orsat. The laboratory features 
have been eliminated and other features have been added 
which adapt the apparatus for the engineer's uses. A deter- 
mination of COo may be made in 45 seconds with this instru- 
ment. 

The drawing shows the principle of the Orsat Analyzer 
as designed by the chemist, Orsat, about 50 years ago. An 
explanation is appended to it. In speaking of the Orsat it 
is only fair to mention the Hempel and Elliott Gas Analyzers, 
which together with several others are obtainable of any 
laboratory supply house, 

All of the present methods of Gas Analysis by absorption 
have been in use for a half a century in the laboratory. These 
methods were devised long before anyone dreamed of using 
a Gas Analyzer in the boiler room and hence the laboratory 
features. The author worked with all of these instruments 
prior to designing his own apparatus, and was driven by the 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



135 



ILLUSTRATION SHOWING THE "ORSAT' 
PRINCIPLE OF GAS ANALYSIS. 




HAYS IMPROVED GAS ANALYZER 

1918 MODEL 

PATENT NO. I.077.J42 




Engineer's Gas Ana- 
lyzer — a modified 
form of "Orsat" de- 
signed by the au- 
thor. 

Diagrammatic Orsat. 

The gas to be analyz- 
ed is taken into the 
"burette" "B," the cock 
" Bl" being opened for 
the purpose. The "Level- 
ing Bottle" "L" is filled 
with water. "L" is then 
raised with the hand and 
water flows from it 
through the connecting 
rubber tube into "B," 
"seeking its level." "Bl" 
is closed when the water 
reaches the zero mark 
on the scale etched on 
"B." The water levels in 
"B" and "L" should then 
be in the same horizontal 
plane, thus giving a 
measurement at atmoss- 
pheric pressure of the 
exact gas sample called 
for by the "burette." 



"A" is charged with a gas absorb- 
ing liquid. The cock "Al" is opened 
and "L" raised, the water driving the 
gas from "B" into "A," displacing 
the liquid in the latter. The C0 2 con- 
tained in the gas is absorbed by the 
liquid, and this causes a contraction 
in the gas sample. The gas remain- 
ing is then pulled back into "B" by 
lowering the Leveling Bottle. The 
chemical (Caustic Potash solution) 
must be drawn up into the capillary 
tube at the top of "A" before the 
cock "Al" is closed. 

The bottle "L" is then held in such 
position that the surface of the wa- 
ter is in the same horizontal plane 
as that of the water in "B." This 
places the gas under atmospheric 
pressure and the reading is taken. 

Additional absorber pipettes, simi- 
lar to "A," are connected by a mani- 
fold with "B" and charged with the 
proper solution if Oxygen and CO 
are to be determined. 



136 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




A 




GAS COLLECTOR, WITH WATER FLOW REGULATOR. 
(Designed by the Author) 



Hoiv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



137 



exigencies of the situation to devise something suited to the 
requirements of the boiler room. 

About ten years ago the author began experimenting 
with devices to collect average gas samples. When the fire- 
man has been shown how to produce 14 or 15 per cent COo 
it is essential, if you would maintain any sort of check upon 
him, to know at the end of the day how much CO2 he has 
in fact produced on the average during the day. To this 
end a device to draw a continuous stream of gas into a 
receptacle at a uniform rate throughout whatever period the 
fireman may be on watch, is necessary. It is an easy matter 
to get gas into a can or bottle and get it out again for analysis. 
All you have to do is to connect the bottle at the top by a 
tube with the flue through which the gas is passing, fill the 
bottle with water and allow the water to run out slowly 
from the bottle. As the water head falls gas is drawn into 
the bottle. This is the principle upon which all gas collect- 
ing devices have been based and the trouble with it is that 
it requires considerable modification before it can be used. 
To collect an average gas sample is one of the hard things 




138 Hoiu to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

that look easy and unless the sample is an average one it may 
be very misleading. 

The rate at which water will flow from a tank or bottle 
depends upon two things, viz. — the opening through which 
the water is allowed to escape and the head of water above 
the opening. As the head falls the rate of outflow decreases 
and it is plain to be seen that the inflow of gas depends upon 
the outflow of water. 

HOW THE AUTHOR MADE A FOOL OF HIMSELF 

The author's first experiments with Gas Collectors were 
conducted at the plant of one of the brewing companies in 
Chicago. He produced a really ridiculous contrivance and 
abandoned it at the end of the first day. It is shown in the 
sketch preceding. 

Water was allowed to drain from the upper bottle into 
the lower one, the rate of flow being fixed by a pinch clamp 
on the connecting rubber tube. As the water fell gas was 
drawn in throught the tube "C." 

It was intended that the lower bottle should be set upon 
the upper shelf when ready to analyze the gas sample, as 
shown by the dotted lines in the illustration. The clamp on 
the tube "C" could then be closed and the one on the con- 
necting rubber tube removed. Water would then ffow by 
gravity back into the first bottle and drive the gas out through 
the tube "D" to the Gas Analyzer. 

The trouble with this arrangement was that on the start 
of the gas collecting operation the water stood at "A" in the 
upper bottle and at "Al" in the lower bottle, while at the 
conclusion of the operation the levels were at "B" and "Bl" 
respectively. These differences in head defeated the object of 
the device, that of collecting an AVERAGE gas sample. 

The absurd contrivance took gas many times faster on 
the start than on the finish, so that it w r as utterly impossible 
to say at the end of the watch what the real average for 
the watch had been. The only case in which such a device 
could be used would be where the percentage of C0 2 is 
uniform throughout the entire watch and in such case it 
would be unnecessary to employ a Gas Collector at all, as a 
oingle snap shot sample taken at any time during the day 



Hoiv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 139 

would provide the necessary information. Unhappily the CO2 
percentage is constantly fluctuating and if we would, know 
the real efficiency of the fireman we must know the real 
average produced by him. When he is cleaning fires a large 
excess of air will be taken and this will of course affect the 
sample collected. It will be seen that it would make a lot 
of difference whether the Collector was running fast or slow 
during the cleaning operation. In some plants there are many 
periods during the day when the boilers are hit with unusual 
loads and other periods when the loads are extremely light. 
Extraordinary care must be exercised by the fireman at these 
times or he will waste a great deal of fuel. It is very obvious 
that with such a gas collecting scheme as the author first 
devised the engineer would be quite unable to say what the 
fireman's efficiency had been. 

Some men have to be hit with a brick before they can see 
anything and a good sized one hit the author when he stood 
in front of his first gas collector .and watched it operate. The 
thing started with quite a respectable outflow of water. By 
the end of the second hour the stream had slowed down to a 
drizzle pizzle. From then on the rate of discharge suffered 
a constant decrease. 

Any school-boy student of physics would have been able 
to predict this result because every school-boy knows that 
the pressure at the outflow opening depends upon the head 
of water above the opening. In this case the author had a 
failing head of water in the upper bottle and a rising head 
of water in the lower one. 

Since that time the author has designed a number of gas 
collecting devices, all of them equipped with flow-regulators. 
One of these is shown in the illustration on a preceding page. 

The Automatic Gas Collector is intended as a substitute 
for the more expensive automatic C0 2 Recorder. The Col- 
lector and Recorder both work toward the same end and you 
can raise your plant to the highest state of combustion 
efficiency with either. The Recorder produces a graphic chart 
and the Collector merely assembles a sample of gas which 
somebody must analyze with a hand instrument. The advan- 
tages of a graphic chart showing all of the variations in 



140 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

efficiency during the day cannot be overestimated. Each 
device has its advantages over the other and the author ought 
to state in fairness what they are: 

The Collector has the following advantages over the 
Recorder: 

1. The cost is much lower and it is possible to equip an 
entire boiler plant with Collectors at the expense of equip- 
ping one boiler with a Recorder. In selecting an equipment, 
however, it should be remembered that cost is not the only 
thing to be considered. It is not what the apparatus costs — it 
is the returns that the apparatus will yield that should be 
the deciding factor. 

Suppose, for example, that you have a checking device, 
either a Collector or a Recorder, on but one boiler. The fire- 
men will know which boiler is being checked and that boiler 
will get most of the attention. The result may be that the 
efficiency of the plant will be less than before the equip- 
ment was put in use. The firemen may so neglect the 
furnaces that are not being checked in order to make a good 
showing on the one that is under supervision, that the result 
may be an actual fuel loss instead of a fuel saving. In such 
a case the apparatus would work to fool the Manager and 
Engineer of the plant rather than to check the fireman. 

2. When you have a Collector or Recorder on each 
boiler the firemen cannot play favorites and if one boiler 
furnace does not perform as well as another and persists in 
its failure you may presume with considerable assurance that 
an air leak has developed somewhere or that something else 
beyond the jurisdiction of the fireman has intervened. You 
will look into that boiler and find the trouble. 

There should be a draft gage connected with each boiler 
furnace so that the fireman will be able to equalize the drafts. 
The gage will further assist the fireman by indicating when 
the fuel bed has burned down too thin or has developed air 
leaks. The gage will show a marked drop in the draft under 
such circumstances. The fireman will learn in a short time 
to watch the draft gage as he watches the steam and water 
gages. 

3. It is quite essential at times to check the furnace gases 



Hotv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 141 

AUTOMATIC C0 2 AND DRAFT RECORDER. 

'Designer 1 v y the Author) 




142 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



WHAT A C0 2 AND DRAFT RECORDER CHART 
LOOKS LIKE. 




for the average CO as well as CO2. This is possible where 
the Gas Collectors are employed. It is impossible where 
CO2 Recorders are used. 

4. The average C0 2 cannot be determined closely from 
- r :0j Recorder chart. It can be determined very closely 
by analysis of the gas trapped in the Collector. And it is 
quite essential that you should know the average, especially 
if the percentage is low. By referring to the tables pre- 
viously given, you will note that in the lower ranges of CO2 
every fraction of a per cent counts for something. If your 
firemen are reducing the preventable loss, even at as slow 
a pace as 1 per cent of coal a day, you have reason for 
rejoicing. They will get there in 25 days if they keep it up, 
providing your waste is 25 per cent. You want to know 
whether you are progressing, standing still or retrograding. 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 143 

This you can learn by means of the hand Analyzer and Gas 
Collector. When you compare two CO2 Recorder charts you 
will have some trouble to determine which is really the best 
if the charts are anywhere near alike as to averages. 

The above are the advantages of the Gas Collector over 
the Recorder. 

The advantage of the Recorder lies in the fact that it 
produces a graphic chart, which shows not only what hap- 
pened, but when it happened. The chart may also be made 
to show the draft and the temperature of the escaping flue 
gases by combining with the CO2 recording gage the necessary 
draft and temperature recording apparatus. Such a com- 
bined chart should accordingly show any relation that might 
exist between the COo, the draft and the temperature of the 
escaping gases. 

CO2 Recorders have been upon the American market for 
about twelve years and it is putting it mildly to say that they 
have given themselves a black eye in steam power plants. 
Both eyes have, in fact, been decorated. The circumstances 
are unfortunate and they are due to the following causes: 

1st. The inherent defects in the earlier Recorders, which 
the author is pleased to say have now been largely remedied 
in most of the later Recorders and entirely remedied in some 
of them. 

2nd. Failure on the part of Recorder manufacturers to 
explain, and failure on the part of Recorder purchasers to 
understand, what the real functions and limitations of the 
CO2 Recorder are. 

As a result of these two things CO 2 Recorders have a 
bad reputation and it takes time to live that sort of a reputa- 
tion down. You will find hundreds of Recorders standing 
unused today in the dark corners of steam power plants and 
if you wish to make some power men see red all that you have 
to do is to mention COo Recorders. 

The CO2 Recorder has been greatly overestimated by the 
manufacturers and it is at present greatly misunderstood by 
the public. It is high time for somebody to stand up and 
spit out the facts about the apparatus. I shall endeavor to 
write the truth in as unprejudiced a manner as possible. 



144 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

If you will talk with many of the engineers who have 
used CO« Recorders you will get this sort of an expression 
from them: 

"The Recorder would probably be all right and help us a 
great deal if it would only 'run.' The one we have never ran 
long enough to give us a line on anything." 

Any apparatus that requires a couple of college professors 
in constant attendance to keep it in operation has no place 
in a steam power plant. We may even go so far as to say 
that any recording apparatus that requires more than the 
irreducible minimum of attention has no business in an engine 
room and less than no business in a boiler room. 

The requisites of a practical CO2 Recorder are as follows: 

1. It must "stay put" and keep on running indefinitely 
after it has been started. 

2. It must require no attention other than that necessary 
to change the chart, renew the chemicals and change the 
filtering material in the gas line. 

3. It must be automatic in all particulars, including the 
adjustments that are necessary to compensate for changes of 
temperature, changes of volume and of specific gravity in 
the absorbent solution, changes of draft in the boiler, etc. 
In other words, the apparatus must look after itself and take 
care of all of the variables with which a COo Recorder is 
forced to contend. 

4. There must be the minimum of moving reciprocating 
parts. The less there are of them the longer the apparatus 
will "stay put," because it is in the nature of mechanical 
contrivances to get out of order, especially when they are of 
the delicate nature demanded in an apparatus of the kind 
considered. 

In some of the earlier Recorders there were as many as 
50 points of adjustment and it required an expert adjuster 
to keep the apparatus in proper operation. Some of the 
modern Recorders have no points of manual adjustment what- 
ever and no mechanical parts whatever. It is accordingly 
possible today to secure an apparatus that will meet the 
requirements as above set forth. 

In soliciting proposals from the manufacturers of COo 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 145 

Recorders the author suggests that guaranties be asked upon 
the following points: 

1. The length of time that the apparatus will be guar- 
anteed to operate properly without attention other than that 
required to change the chart, renew the chemical for absorbing 
the CO 2 and change the filtering material used to clean 
the gas. 

2. The annual cost of upkeep, including the cost of 
charts and chemicals. 

A statement should also be asked as to the method of 
controlling the variables of temperature, etc., referred to in 
a preceding paragraph, the number of the points of adjustment 
about the apparatus and the extent to which movable mechan- 
ical parts are employed. 

With the information on the points suggested in hand 
you will know which apparatus to purchase and where to 
get it. 

The earlier Recorders failed, first because of inherent 
defects in the Recorders themselves, and second because the 
apparatus, when it did work, could not live up to the claims 
made for it by the manufacturers. 

Now, what are the functions of a CO? Recorder? 

The apparatus is a watchman, and a good one, but no 
more. It will help you to keep the wastes stopped after 
you have first "spotted" them and stopped them. It will 
help you to maintain efficiency after you have attained it. 
It is not the proper apparatus for "diagnosing" combustion 
troubles or "building up furnace" efficiency. I do not say 
that you cannot diagnose or build up with it. I say that it 
is not the proper apparatus for that purpose and I make that 
statement because with a hand analyzer I can do more 
"diagnosing" and "building up" in an hour than I can with a 
CO2 Recorder in a month; and I can diagnose some things 
with the hand instrument that I could not attempt at all with 
a Recorder. There is no sense in waiting a month for the 
information that you can obtain in an hour. When you buy a 
Recorder buy a "hand analyzer" also. You will then be 
equipped for all sorts of combustion investigations. When 
necessary you can test for CO. 



146 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The CO 2 Recorder will tell you in what way the fireman 
has carried out your instructions, whether he has observed 
the methods that your investigations with the hand instru- 
ment have proved to be necessary. It will spur each one of 
your firemen to his best efforts because it is human nature 
to be more careful when there is a watchman looking on. It is 
human nature to hustle when the race is on with another man. 

There is a CO2 Recorder in an Eastern power plant and 
considerable competition among the firemen. One of the men 
succeeded in making a particularly good record and he led his 
fellows to the Recorder gage, exhibited the chart and invited 
them to "Go to it and beat that." While none of them suc- 
ceeded in beating it, some of them did succeed in measuring 
up to it. 

With the hand instrument you can make sure that your 
boiler setting is in proper condition — you can test here, there 
and wherever you wish with it. You can, as I have explained, 
look at the furnace when you look at the instrument and you 
can refer the result of each analysis to the observed furnace 
conditions that produced the result. You cannot do this with 
a Recorder. Don't let any salesman persuade you that you can. 

It takes time to get the gas from the boiler to the Re- 
corder. It must flow through a considerable length of pipe 
and through soot Alters. There is necessarily some "lag" 
on this account. The "lag" may be anywhere from two 
minutes to fifteen minutes. The less of it the better. On 
account of this the fireman cannot guide his operations by 
any C0 2 Recorder chart or by any "C0 2 Indicator" accessory 
to the Recorder. To be sure, the Chart and the Indicator of 
the Recorder will tell the fireman that there is a hole in the 
fire, but it will report the information anywhere from 2 to 15 
minutes after the hole began business. A differential draft 
gage will report the hole the instant that hole appears and the 
fireman can get instant action. You need gages for the pur- 
pose of draft equalization as set forth in a previous chapter. 
Have your firemen rely upon them as indicators of furnace 
conditions. Any manufacturer of C0 2 Recorders will be glad 
to supply you with a CO2 Indicator if you are foolish enough 
to order such an attachment. Don't order it because it is 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



147 



liable to do more harm than good. It will report a hole in 
the fire after the fireman has fixed the hole and it will report 
a good fire when there are in fact holes that need stopping. 
This is due to the necessary time interval that intervenes 
between the taking of the gas from the boiler and the report 
on that gas by the Recorder. 

I repeat that the functions of the Recorder are those of . 
a watchman. Let it watch the fireman for you and let th©* 
fireman watch his fires. If he does that, the Recorder will 
make a good report upon him. Watching the chart of the 
Recorder will assist the fireman to some extent, as it will 
show him the result of what he did some minutes ago. In 
other words, it will enable him to work out things if he has 
the intelligence to observe, interpret and draw conclusions. 
But I maintain that it is better to show the fireman, by means 
of object lessons with the hand Analyzer, what is and what 
is not a proper "fire," also what is and what is not the proper 
draft for that fire. Thereafter let the fireman watch the fires 
and the draft gage and set your CO2 Recorder to watch him. 
This will keep the fireman reasonably busy and if he attends 
to business the Recorder will have a good report to make upon 
him. 

There should be one CO2 Recorder for each boiler, but 
tbis may mean more of an expenditure than you care to incur. 



I 2 



3 4 



^H3 fl-CK 




:a 



Arrangement of Piping Enabling- One Recorder to Serve a 
Battery of Four Boilers. 



H8 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

One Recorder for a battery of boilers may prove a serious 
mistake., unless the piping is so arranged that the firemen will 
. have no means of knowing from which boiler the gas is being 
drawn. Suppose for example, that you were a fireman and 
that you knew the Recorder to be working on the gas from 
Number 1 boiler. In spite of yourself you would give more 
attention to that boiler than to any other one. You would 
want to produce a good chart becouse you would know that 
£be Manager and Engineer would inspect that chart. But if 
^ou had no means of knowing which boiler the Recorder might 
be reporting upon, you would take no chances. You would 
give the same attention to all boilers, and doing this you would 
be sure to produce a good chart. 

Your Recorder or your Gas Collector will work upon but 
one boiler at a time. If you have several boilers in operation 
and but one Recorder, run the individual gas pipes into a 
common header. Place a valve on each gas pipe near the 
header and box the valves in such a way that the firemen 
will have no means of knowing which valve is open. Then 
switch the Recorder from time to time and you will have a 
reasonably good check on the entire plant, though not so 
good a one as you would have if you were provided with a 
full equipment of Recorders. 

If you wish to establish a bonus system in your fire-room, 
and such a system always brings results where all else fails, 
an equipment of Collectors will be in some respects better 
adapted to your purpose than Recorders, because your 
bonuses must be paid on averages and the Collector deals 
in averages at the expense of details, whereas the Recorder 
deals in details at the expense of averages. You can get 
the approximate averages by running a planimeter over the 
Recorder charts, but you can get the exact average within 
one-fifth of a per cent C0 2 by analyzing the gas trapped 
in the Collector. When using the Collectors you must depend 
upon someone to make the analyses. If that person turns in 
false reports, either designedly or otherwise, your bonus 
system will be unfair to some of the firemen and unfair to 
yourself. The Recorder will turn in a correct report within 
the limits of its accuracy. Surely there is soneone about 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 149 

your plant who can be relied upon to analyze the gas taken. 
by the Collectors. If the man to whom that work is entrusted 
is under suspicion a trap can easily be set for him and if he. 
is guilty he will step into it. 

I was asked for advice not long ago by a plant Manager. 
He was uncertain whether to buy Collectors or Recorders. 
I stated the pros and cons of it much as I have stated them 
in this chapter. He said, "We are wasting so much fuel that 
we can afford to do this thing right. I shall buy a Recorder 
for each boiler." 

It is very largely a matter of choice whether you adopt 
Collectors or Recorders, and I have tried to set forth the 
facts as I see them in order that you may have the data upon 
which to base your choice. 

The reader will understand that in my discussion of the 
apparatus required for combustion analysis I am not depre- 
ciating any related apparatus by my failure to mention it. 
Water meters and steam flow meters have their uses in the 
boiler room. The same may be said of recording pyrometers 
and other apparatus. The further such apparatus goes in the 
analysis of conditions and the location of causes the more 
reason there is for its presence. 

The feed water meter and steam flow meter talk about 
capacity without relation to efficiency, while the CO^ Re- 
corder talks about efficiency without relation to capacity. 
There is no way that the one form of apparatus can be 
substituted for the other. Some men, however, are so vio- 
lently partisan as to claim that an arrangement of pyrometers 
showing the temperature drop between the furnace and the 
uptake may be substituted for everything else that I have 
mentioned. All such claims as these are absurd and instead 
of boosting any particular apparatus, they hurt all apparatus. 
It is better to stick to facts, especially when the .facts are 
so patent. 

I have included a thermometer or pyrometer for measur- 
ing the temperature of the escaping gases, among the desir- 
able testing apparatus for the boiler room. It will give you 
more information on boiler efficiency than on furnace 
efficiency. For this reason I have said very little about 



150 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

temperatures in connection with the flue gases. When we 
have done all that it is possible to do to secure economical 
combustion i£ is then up to the boiler to take the heat energy 
handed to it. The furnace must not rob the boiler by turn- 
ing cold air into the gases or by sending combustible gas 
up the chimney. When the furnace can show that it has 
discharged its functions properly, the boiler is responsible 
for any excess temperature that the escaping gases may show. 
The temperature should not be more than 100 degrees Fah- 
renheit above that of the steam in the boiler. 

Take your flue gas temperatures at the point where the 
gases leave the heating surfaces of the boiler, as I have 
already advised. I sometimes hear engineers boasting about 
extremely low stack temperatures and in almost every case 
of this kind I have found that the temperatures were taken 
in the breeching or at some other improper point. 

And now let me briefly recapitulate the steps that you 
must take to substitute economy for the waste that is ruling 
your boiler room. 

First, you must get yourself "under conviction of your 
sins," as the revivalist would express it. You must really 
want all of the economy that is coming to you and determine 
to get it. 

Second, you must "diagnose" your waste troubles and dis- 
cover the remedies called for. 

Third, you must make the firemen understand what is 
expected of them, and they must be convinced that your 
contentions are right. If the fireman does not agree with 
you on any subject relating to the management of the fires 
you must convince him that you are right and he is wrong. 
This is easy. 

In a big Eastern power plant there is a negro fireman who 
rejoices in the nickname of "Happy." He was persuaded 
that he was some fireman and it would have been impossible 
to argue him out of that hallucination. The Chief Engineer 
had tried arguments without success. He decided to give 
'Happy" an object lesson and as the man was looked upon 
;is an expert by the other negro firemen the Chief considered 
the object lesson as of sufficient importance to warrant a 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 151 

couple of evaporative tests. 

A ten-hour test was run with "Happy" as fireman and 
he was instructed to do his "darndest" as they were trying 
for a record. The man was allowed to fire in his own way 
and he was a tired man at the end of the day. 

On the following morning the Chief Engineer said: 
"Happy, we are going to run another test today and you are 
going to fire again. You fired your way yesterday and today 
you are going to fire my way. I shall stay with you and you 
will fire exactly as I say. We will not stop the test until 
we have evaporated as much water as we did yesterday." 

The test was conducted under this arrangement, and it 
was concluded at the end of nine hours. The Chief then 
pointed to the large pile of coal that was left and said: 
"Happy, what would you think of a fireman who would steal 
that amount of coal from his employer?" "Why," said Happy, 
"Ah nevah stole no coal from this company. Ah nevah stole 
no coal from nobody." "I know it," said the Chief, "but you 
have wasted coal every day and wasting coal is worse than 
stealing it, because nobody gets any use of fuel that is wasted. 
We evaporated as much water today as we evaporated yester- 
day. We have an hour to spare and as much coal to spare 
as you see lying on the floor." "Is you sure about the evap- 
oration?" said "Happy." "Why Ah worked like a niggah 
yesterday and today Ah hardly worked at all. Ah didn't sup- 
pose the boiler was doing anything." "Happy" was convinced 
and ready to take instructions where before he would accept 
instructions from nobody. Today he is said to be one of the 
most expert firemen in the city of Pittsburgh. 

It is not necessary to run an evaporative test to give your 
fireman an object lesson. You can give very convincing 
lessons with the "spotting" apparatus I have mentioned. 

For the fourth step you must institute a checking system 
in your plant as already suggested and the fifth and final 
step is taken when the incentive for ultimate effort is given 
by a bonus system, or otherwise. 

I have never known a bonus system to fail of the most 
gratifying results. I know of nothing upon which you can 
base a more equitable bonus system than the CO2 averages. 



152 Hotv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

From the tables given you can arrange a bonus schedule to 
suit yourself. Make your firemen stockholders in your 
economy enterprise and they will work their shirts off to 
earn dividends. And as a gratifying by-product of your 
bonus system, your firemen will be anchored at your plant. 
You know what it means to have firemen quit when firemen 
are hard to get. 

I have talked with the Managers of many plants where 
bonus systems are in force and I have yet to find one who is 
dissatisfied with the results. The firemen are always happy. 
In most cases the rule is to distribute about one-tenth of the 
money saved among the men saving it, the distribution to be 
pro rata according to each man's efficiency. The savings are 
figured from the CO2 percentages. In some cases these per- 
centages are checked by the coal and kilowatt records. When 
the figures fail to check it is assumed that something is wrong 
with the boilers proper or that something requires attention 
in the engine room. When the COo reports are right it is 
known that the firemen and the furnaces are not to blame 
for any slip in efficiency that may be indicated by the coal 
and kilowatt records. 

The operating men in the power plant have the last 
word to say on the subject of efficiency. No matter how good 
the physical state of the plant may be or how complete the 
equipment there will be efficiency in proportion to the 
interest, intelligence, fidelity and close attention to duty of 
the operating force. Anything that tends to stimulate the 
men in these particulars will improve efficiency. Anything 
that works in the opposite direction will have the opposite 
effect. It is a case of dealing with human nature. 

Give the men an incentive. It may consist of a pecuniary 
reward, the hope of promotion, the fear of discharge, a spirit 
of rivalry or anything else that will supply a moving interest 
in the work. 

Whatever the incentive may be there must be some fair 
and equitable means of comparing the work of one man with 
that of another. Various means have been employed in 
different power plants with varying degrees of success. The 
following "yard sticks" have been used to measure efficiency: 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 153 

1. Coal consumption. 

2. Evaporation. 

3. Factory output in relation to coal consumption. 

4. Combustion efficiency. 

The coal consumption depends: 

(a) Upon combustion efficiency; (b) the quality of the 
fuel; (c) efficiency of the furnace as a furnace; (d) efficiency 
of the boiler as a boiler; (e) co-ordination of furnace and 
boiler; (f) physical conditions of furnace and boiler; (g) 
efficiency in the use of steam; (h) efficiency in the distribu- 
tion of steam; (i) efficiency of engines, generators, factory 
machinery, etc.; (j) the load on the power plant. 

The evaporation per pound of coal burned and the coal 
cost per unit of factory output depend upon the same mis- 
cellaneous aggregation of factors as the coal consumption. 
So far as my information goes it has never proved feasible 
to measure out bonuses of any kind with ony one of the three 
"yard sticks" first mentioned, because it is impossible to 
definitely fix and measure responsibility with such means of 
measurement. The fireman may blame the coal, the boilers, 
the load or the wastes in the plant. He is sure to place the 
responsibility anywhere but upon his own shoulders. To rate 
the efficiency of anybody in the power department by coal 
consumption, evaporation or factory output would require 
considerable testing apparatus, a great deal of time, book- 
keeping and other expense. 

Looking into the bonus problem further the following 
facts become apparent: 

1. The plant must be operated with the equipment that 
it possesses. If the furnaces and boilers are misfits or other- 
wise not adapted, they must be used, nevertheless, until the 
plant is remodeled or reconstructed. The firemen and 
engineers are not responsible for the equipment because they 
did not select it. 

2. If the equipment is in bad physical condition the men 
who burn the coal cannot as a rule be held responsible. 

3. If steam is wasted in the plant the firemen are not at 
all responsible. The engineers may or may not be responsible. 



154 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

4. If the load varies the engineers and firemen are not 
responsible. They must meet the load as it comes. 

5. If a poor quality of fuel is furnished the engineers 
and firemen are not to blame. 

The fireman is responsible for combustion efficiency and 
for no other sort of efficiency. Such efficiency depends sec- 
ondarily upon the coal and the physical state of the furnace 
and boiler settings. It depends to some extent upon the fur- 
nace itself, of which the grate is a part. All of the factors 
which tend to complicate the question of responsibility for 
combustion efficiency may be eliminated in the following 
manner: 

1st. The boilers and furnaces should first be put in a 
good state of repair — particular attention being given to the 
brick work and the baffles. It should be remembered, also, 
that there is no excuse for soot and scale. 

Someone, preferably the engineer-in-charge, should be 
made responsible for the up-keep of the steam generating 
equipment. A signed daily report, covering such details as it 
is necessary to observe in maintaining the physical state of 
the plant, should be required and all the material and help 
necessary for proper up-keep should be furnished to the 
responsible party. When these things are done proper up- 
keep will be assured and it will not be assured until they 
are done. 

Don't take it for granted that your plant is in first class 
shape. Make sure of it. Just assume that your coal bills 
are too high and look for the reasons. You will find that 
they are too high. 

2nd. Select the coal that is best adapted to the furnace 
and the general conditions affecting the plant. The coal will 
vary in quality to some extent but probably not enough to 
affect the efficiency of combustion. 

3rd. Having put the equipment in good condition and 
insured the proper daily care of it, a standard of operating 
combustion efficiency may be established. 

If with the furnaces you have and the coal you have 
selected an average of 14 per cent CO2 may be maintained by 
proper stoking and the use of the proper drafts, let 14 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 155 

per cent be the standard. Should the coal he of low grade, 
high in ash, 14 per cent may be too high. You can easily 
ascertain what the top-notch figure may be. 

When the above three things are done and the necessary 
apparatus provided, a bonus system may be established for 
the firemen. If considered advisable, the engineers who have 
supervising charge of the firemen, may be included in the 
benefits of the bonus. 

WHEN THE BOILERS AND FURNACES ARE IN 
PROPER CONDITION THE EFFICIENCY OF THE MEN 
IN CHARGE OF THE FURNACES IS A CLOSE MEASURE 
OF THE EFFICIENCY WITH WHICH THE STEAM IS 
GENERATED. 

For the various reasons above given it is argued that the 
only sensible basis upon which to place a Bonus System is 
COMBUSTION EFFICIENCY. Fortunately the means for de- 
termining such efficiency and for definitely rating each watch 
and each man are simple and easily applied. It is merely 
necessary to know the percentage of CO 2 produced by each 
furnace during each watch. An occasional check should be 
made to determine the presence of CO. 

To make clear how a bonus system may be placed in oper- 
ation let us assume that we are applying it to your plant. 
It is presumed that in overhauling the plant the boiler 
dampers and damper controls received proper attention and 
that a draft gage has been provided for each boiler furnace. 
Efficiency depends to a great extent upon the use of the 
proper draft and it would be idle to tell the firemen that they 
must use certain specified drafts over the fires if you have 
not provided them with the means of continually measuring 
drafts. 

In fixing upon a standard of furnace operation you must 
determine: 

1st. How thick the fuel should be carried on the grates. 

2nd. What draft to use for the normal load and how the 
draft should be varied to take care of changes in the load. 

3rd. Methods of firing or of operating the stokers to 
avoid faults in the fuel bed and to keep the fuel constantly 
at the right depth upon the grates. 



156 Hotv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

4th. Proper methods of using the fire tools, particularly 
the slice-bar. 

5th. Proper methods of cleaning the fires. 

6th. Proper methods of banking fires. 

It may take all of a day or perhaps two days to work 
out the various problems as it will be necessary to make sure 
that no mistakes are being made in the diagnosis. 

Following the study as outlined above it will be necessary 
to instruct, each of the firemen and to make sure that all of 
the instructions are understood. 

Following this it will be necessary to know the average 
percentage of CO2 produced each watch by each boiler fur- 
nace. Knowing this it will be easy. 

1st. To rate the firemen according to combustion ef 
ficiency. 

2nd. To determine the quantity of fuel heedlessly wasted 
and who wasted it. 

3rd. To compute the bonuses and make the prope: 
awards. 

The bonus schedule may be whatever you wish to make it. 
The maximum premium need not exceed 50 cents per day. 
It will be necessary to fix upon some percentage of COo as 
a base and to apply the schedule upon percentages above 
that base. 

The bonus system is the one sensible method of increasing 
the fireman's pay without feeling it. The fireman, himself, 
produces the money from which the premiums are paid. 

The Manager of a plant on the Texas border, who employs 
Mexicans as firemen, writes as follows: 

"I offer each man a bonus of five per cent of the fuel that 
he can save and the effect has been magical. The men come 
to me and in their broken English try to explain how hard 
they are trying to carry out my instructions." 

"Each man received a bonus of $3.75 the first month, $2.50 
the second month, $3.30 the third and $7.80 the fourth. The 
plant was only running half the time the first three months 
and from all indications the bonus will be from seven to ten 
dollars per month in the future. 

"In four months each man had received $17.35 extra pay 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 157 

and the fuel account was benefitted by a saving of $312.30, 
which was all 'velvet' as no money had been invested by the 
company to accomplish the saving. 

"After this experience I firmly believe that this is the only 
way to handle firemen. It is simply a case of deciding 
whether the money is to be given to the fuel dealer or divided 
between the men and the company." 

An Eastern plant adopted the bonus system and saved 30 
per cent on its fuel the first year. The men were paid 10 per 
cent of the saving effected, leaving the company a net saving 
of 27 per cent with no investment whatever except the small 
amount required for CO2 apparatus. 

The bonus schedule in force in this plant is as follows: 



r cent CO 2. 


Premium per day. 


12 


$0.75 


11.5 


.70 


11 


.65 


10.5 


.60 


10 


.55 


9.5 


.50 


9 


.45 


8.5 


.40 


8 


.35 


7.5 


.30 


7 


.25 


6.5 


.20 



6 .15 

The Manager of another Eastern factory writes me as 
follows concerning his bonus system: 

"In order to get the very best results and the most eco- 
nomical method of firing we are paying a bonus to the fireman 
who is on watch from 4 A. M. to 12 Noon and from 12 Noon to 
8 P. M. on all days when the factory is in full operation. We 
pay bonus as follows: 

"For 10% C0 2 , 10c; for 11%, 15c; for 12%, 25c; and for 
13%, 40c. In addition to this we pay $2.00 extra each month 
to the fireman making the highest average the month. 

"In order to show you what we are doing I enclose here- 
with a copy of our record for the month of June. 



158 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



CO, PCT. 



RECORD OF C0 2 PERCENTAGE 
Month of June, 1913 
FIREMEN 
Bonus 



1 


CO 


2 


12. 


3 

4 

5 


10.6 

10. 

.... 11.1 


6 


ll.fi 


7 


8 


9 


10 


11 


12 


13 


14 


15 - 


16 

17 


12.3 

.... 10.8 


18 


.... 12.2 


19 


.... 12. 


20 


.... 12.2 


21 


.... 12. 


22 


23 


12.2 


24 


.... 13. 


25 


12. 


26 

27 


11.6 

ll.fi 


28 

29 


30 


31 

Totals . . . 


'. '. '. !l87!2 



Bolin 



Jno. Zigalinski Peter Rynice 



12. 

11.6 

12. 

13.2 

12.9 

12.4 

12! 7 

12.8 
12. 
11.6 
12.4 



12.4 



Averages 11.7 

Jno. Zig-alinski, extr; 



?2 



11.2 

11. 

10.2 

10.4 

11. 

10.6 

12.1 

12.6 
12.8 
12.8 
11.9 



30 148. 

12.3 
bonus for best avertge, 



12. 

11. 

11.7 

11.7 

11.4 

11.8 

li!7 

208^8 
11.6 
$2.00. 



$3 



"We employ three firemen and one only is on watch at a 
time, which is 8 hours on watch and 16 hours off. On Sun- 
days the length of the watch is changed so that the same man 
will not always be on the same watch. We are burning at 
this time of the year about 12 tons Bit. coal every 24 hours, 
the cost of same is $3.35 per ton in the bin, and since we 
started to pay bonus the percentage of CO2 is higher and we 
know that our firemen are doing the best they can to get the 
best result, and we know that by the bonus system and the 
regular use of CO2 apparatus we have reduced the coal con- 
sumption in our boiler room." 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



159 



The Troubles and Triumphs of 
"Rastus Brown" 



A BONUS STORY IN FOUR CHAPTERS. 
INTRODUCTION. . 

A Southern plant purchased CO 2 apparatus and in order 
to induce the best efforts of its firemen offered a crate of pul- 
lets each month to the man making the best CO2 average. 
The story relates the experiences of Erastus, one of the 
firemen. 

CHAPTER I. 

MAH 60LLV SOME PULLETS SOME PULLETS 




"Now watch dis Niggah make See Oh Two 
Case Ah wants dem pullets foh a chicken stew." 



160 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



CHAPTER II. 

But he took no pullets home to his larder 
Because another fireman "tried a little harder." 

Blanche lays down a barrage fire- op 

FLAT I RONS, TEACUPS, AN D ROLLING PINS 




The stove was ready, likewise the pot, 
But there were no ehickens and Blanche got hot, 
Then she broke some crockery on his bean 
And 'Rastus left for a friendlier scene. 



CHAPTER III. 



COA1E ALONG, YO 



OLD C0z_ 

il 
COME AliONGT 




"Got to git dat bonus and de pullets now 
Or I dassent go home, no more, no how.' 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 161 



CHAPTER IV. 




The smile that grew on 'Rastus Brown 
The day he pulled the bonus down, 



162 Hotv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

In a preceding chapter I have suggested a form for a 
daily report upon boiler room maintenance. The theory is 
that when a signed report is required the chances of effective 
supervision are increased. 

The daily "Records of Operation" should cover, when 
possible, all of the items shown on the following chart: 

The things that I have suggested in this book may mean 
a little initial expense to the management. They cannot 
mean much and it is just a question whether you will spend 
a little money for the apparatus that your engineer needs or 
give a great deal of money to the coal dealer. They mean a 
little extra trouble for the engineer, but a reasonable amount 
of trouble is a good thing for an engineer. It keeps him 
from brooding on being an engineer. 







R 


ECORD5 OF OPERATION 










HATCH 


FIREMEN 


COAL 


TOTAL 


ASH 


TOTAL 


CO,. 


M6E \ MF ^TEMP 


FEEDS 
EfFTER 


VATER\ WATER \ 
LEM\EVAPORATED\ 


1 














1 






1 1 



















































2 














































































3 












































































TOTALS V 


\ 






\ II II 






Rem. 


ARKS 
























OPERATING ENGINEER 



Hoiv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 



163 





\ 




kv 


,- II ! t 


. 


^J^j^ftj 


- 
k II • *" 


4 i 

if 

1 


- j 

i : 

r ... | 


1 


SB * ? - •. • Sg HP ~ - * 


lltlf 

^41 



Showing installation of Gas Collectors in a 
plant where records of the daily CO z averages 
of each fireman are kept. 



CO z Recorders are used in many plants,--one 
for each boiler-the firemen's averages being 
taken from the charts. 



164 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

Appendix. 
OIL, GAS, WOOD REFUSE AND OTHER FUELS. 

When Oxygen meets Carbon, Hydrogen, Sulphur or other 
combustible in the presence of heat, chemical union occurs 
and what is known as "combustion" takes place. Heat results. 
This is the whole story and it makes little difference what 
the combustible may be. 

The rapidity with which combustion takes place depends 
upon the ease with which the Oxygen and the combustible 
find each other. The more intimately the two are mixed before 
ignition the more complete and the more rapid the combustion 
will be. The combustion of gun-powder is practically instan- 
taneous because the Oxygen producing substances are thor- 
oughly mixed with the powdered combustible matter. 

When we place coal in the furnace in large lumps the 
Oxygen can act only upon the surfaces of the lumps. It can- 
not have contact with the combustible below the surface until 
the lumps have disintegrated and provided surface exposure. 
It follows, therefore, that the lumpier the coal the greater the 
excess of air that we are likely to send through the furnace. 
Conditions are best for efficiency, as I have tried to show in 
preceding chapters, when the fuel is completely burned with 
the least possible excess of air. 

Now, when we break the coal up into small particles, it 
is evident that Ave greatly increase the surface exposure, 
thereby increasing the rate of combustion and decreasing the 
volume of air that it is necessary to force through the furnace. 
When we grind the coal to a fine dry powder, mix it with 
air and blow it into the furnace, it burns like gas or oil. The 
resulting temperature is extremely high owing to the rapidity 
of combustion which, in turn, is owing to the infinite surface 
exposure of the fuel particles. Dust, when suspended in air, 
is quite as explosive as gas when mixed with air. Internal 
combustion engines have actually been run experimentally 
upon powdered coal. 

The author receives many letters from engineers and 
others asking if the methods he has suggested will apply 



Appendix. 165 

to oil, gas and wood refuse when burned for power. Of course, 
they will. Why not? Combustion is combustion. 

Considerable has been said in the preceding chapters 
about the importance of excluding all unnecessary air from 
the furnace and of preventing all air from flowing in upon the 
heating surfaces through faults in the setting, etc. This de- 
sideratum is of universal application regardless of the fuel. 

It is necessary that the fuel and the air be supplied to the 
furnace in right quantities and the right manner. This is 
true of coal and it is doubly true of the powdered, liquid and 1 
gaseous fuels. 

Draft is a vital factor in efficiency when a solid fuel is 
being burned. It is doubly vital in the case of oil and gas. 

It is possible to so adjust the oil or gas burner that the 
mixture will be constant as Jong as the drafts, pressures and 
atmospheric conditions are constant. It is impossible to main- 
tain anything better than approximately constant conditions 
in the coal burning furnace. The most automatic type of 
automatic stoker requires some attention. "While the general 
principles governing economical combustion are the same, 
regardless of the fuel, and while the general methods of insur- 
ing combustion control have general application, it is plain 
that stress must be laid upon certain of the methods when we 
are burning a solid and upon others when we are burning a 
fluid. And when we are dealing exclusively with coals it must 
be remembered that no two coals can be properly treated by 
following the same routine. For example: A caking coal 
requires frequent raking to break up the solid masses of 
coke which form in the furnace. A non-caking coal should 
never be raked at all. A high volatile coal requires the admrs- 
sion of air over the fire as well as through the grate, while a 
low volatile coal may take its. entire air supply through the 
grate. Some coals call for a thick bed of fuel and others for 
a thinner bed. Some may be burned at a very high tempera- 
ture and others, owing to the fusing properties of t&e ash s 
must be burned at much lower temperatures. Fine coals 
usually give the best results when burned wet and coarse 
coals when burned dry. It is unhappily impossible to lay 



166 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



down an exact set of rules for burning coal. The details must 
be varied to suit the circumstances. 

THE FUEL IS BURNED MOST EFFICIENTLY WHEN 
IT IS COMPLETELY CONSUMED WITH THE LEAST 
SI' RPLUS OF AIR. This rule applies alike to the two 
extremes of anthracite coal and natural gas; it goes with 
fuels of all descriptions. 

The reader will note from the tabic page 105, and the 
liait, page 107, both of which are based upon pure Carbon 
fuel, that the indicated fuel loss grows less and less per 
increment of COo as we ascend the scale toward the theoret- 
ical maximum. A small fraction of a per cent in the lower 
ranges of the scale means more than a whole per cent in the 
higher ranges. Note the table following: 



From 



mprt 


)vement in CO-. 


Indicated Fuel Saving 


2 per cent to 3 per cent 


27.72 per cent 


3 ' 


. .« u 4 .. 


14.00 " ' 




4 ' 


i " " 5 " " 


8.49 " « 




5 ' 


'• " 6 " 


5.70 " * 




6 ' 


« " " 7 " 


4.07 " ' 




7 ' 


' " " 8 " 


3.36 " * 




8 


9 " 


2.08 " ' 




9 


.. .. 10 ,. 


1.89 " ' 




10 


'• " 11 " 


1.56 " ' 




11 


' M " 12 '• 


1.29 " ' 




12 


, „ ,< 13 „ 


1.09 " ' 




13 


« .< u 14 .. 


.94 " ' 




14 


' " " 15 " 


.80 " ' 





The author has been asked many times, "What percentage 
of COo in the gases of combustion indicates the highest 
efficiency when the fuel is fuel oil?" The same question has 
been asked regarding natural gas, wood refuse and other 
fuels. 

The terms "coal," "fuel oil," etc., are general terms only. 
Coal may range from almost straight Carbon with only a 
trace of volatile matter to a fuel that is more than 50 per 
cent volatile matter. It may contain all the way from a trace 
of Sulphur to as much as 10 per cent or more. There are 
wide variations in fuel oil and in natural gas. Before being 



Appendix. 167 

able to say exactly how the gases of combustion should an- 
alyze it is necessary to know how the fuel analyzes. 

The table on page 105 is strictly arbitrary because it 
assumes a fuel and an uptake temperature. It also assumes 
that it is not safe in practice, and therefore not good practice, 
to court more than 15 per cent CO2 on account of the diffi- 
culties with CO. I have seen as high as 18.6 per cent CO2 
without a trace of CO but that condition was sustained for 
only a few moments. You will do well to maintain an aver- 
age of 15 per cent without suffering incomplete combustion 
and I have therefore selected that figure as the top-notch of 
practical perfection with high-carbon coal. You should be 
highly pleased with an average of 14 per cent and satisfied 
with an average of 13. 

But what about the other fuels? The following table 
assumes averages of bituminous coal, fuel oil and natural gas. 
Per cent Per cent Per cent 

Fuel Theoretical CO>. Practical CO2. Air Excess. 



Straight Carbon 


20.7 


15.0 


38 


Fuel Oil 


15.0 


14.0 


7 


Bituminous Coal 


17.9 


14.0 


28 


Natural Gas 


11.9 


11.0 


8 



For wood and "bagasse" the figures given for bituminous 
coal may be taken. 

It is easier to mix air with gas than it is to mix it with 
coal unless the coal is crushed to an impalpable powder. A 
high volatile coal burns more freely than a high Carbon coal. 
These facts serve to explain the differences in the excess air 
required. 

The diagrams, 1 to VII, serve to show the results of the 
reactions in the boiler furnace when various fuels are burned. 
It will be observed that as the percentage of Hydrogen in 
the fuel increases the percentage of C0 2 in the flue gases 
decreases. The foot notes should make the meaning of the 
diagrams clear. 

Combustion analysis may be employed to check up an in- 
ternal combustion engine as well as a boiler furnace. The 
theoretical percentage of C0 2 resulting from the combustion 
of high grade gasoline is 14.2 and of kerosene 14.4.- In good 



168 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 







Air Entering the Furnace 

Diagram I. 












H 


ii 




syyy 

m 


y^ 


/yyy 


^ 




yyvZ 


i 


yy y A 


Y//A 

xygre 

y/A 


n yyy 


yy/ 

/ yy 
yy/ 


W 


//// 


P 




















l 
















































r\ 


i+roc? 


rn 




















































































C 


in s/r-v 

1 


«■ 



Air entering- the furnace contains 20.7 per cent by volume 
(usually) of Free Oxygen and 73 per cent plus of Nitrogen. 
Normal air carries about four one hundredths of one per cent 
.. ; and minute quantities c: the rare gases. Argon, Helium, 
Krypton, Neon and Xenon. The latter are all classed with 
Nitrogen in gas analysis. 

practice it is possible to secure as high as 13.5 per cent CO^ 
without CO. 

To secure a gas sample from an automobile or other in- 
ternal combustion engine the exhaust manifold should be 
tapped at a point where a mixture of the exhaust from all 



Appendix. 



169 



Gases Leaving the Furnace 

Diagram II. 

(Theoretical diagram ua^ed upon pure Carbon fuel) 





sk : il il Sra I • SSE SS IE X 




























































































































































Co 2 if 


air . 





Theoretical Percentage of C02, 20.7. 

When Oxygen combines with Carbon to produce complete com- 
bustion the gas, C0 2 , results — the volume of the gas pro- 
duced exactly equalling the volume of the Oxygen used under 
like conditions of temperature and pressure. If straight 
Carbon could be burned under theoretical conditions the 
gases would carry 20.7 per cent C0 2 as shown by the above 
diagram. Such a result cannot be attained in actual practice. 

of the cylinders will be insured. As the loads and speeds 

vary different mixtures are required. The carburetor should 

be adjusted for normal conditions of operation and it can be 

adjusted with the utmost accuracy if the exhaust gases are 

examined. 



170 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 
Gases Leaving the Furnace 

Diagram III. 

(The diagram assumes a straight Carbon fuel and illustrates 
the conditions obtaining in good practice) 



iiiiiii n 


I 


i 


I 


§ 


1 2HI II 


i 


7/7, 

faces. 

//// 


//// 

Oxyqe 


■i 




























? 




































































































































































































_ 



Percentage of CO* in good practice, 15. 

Compare with Diagrams I and IV 

When the fuel is straight Carbon the C0 2 percentage plus the 
Oxygen percentage plus one-half the CO percentage should 
equal 20.7. 



Diagram Showing the Conditions in Average Practice 

Diagram IV 

' (High Carbon Coal) 




Seventeen per cent preventable fuel loss chargeable to excess air. 



Appendix. 171 

Gases Leaving the Furnace 

Jvlayrram V. 

(Theoretical diagram based upon average high volatile 
bituminous coal) 



■B^SSf ^j§» s% BBSwB eBBreSS r^^E& S£?t54 SS££; ^^^x^y ^1 ma ^ ion °f 


fHS9Ri 8^MB S^^Ei 8PHB£ SjSSSS? tSBSKjfji iSftSit? f^^^^ *■-& H ^ rorr, ^ o/rj - 

bBBhB 8b3>HI{ SyrffiSB 1 £2^a£*S t fiS&lz" 5tffc%3St C *^ \^^Wyc l royen 






























































































































































tv„< 


«.—• 





Theoretical Percentage of CO2, 17.9 (Sulphur Disregarded). 

The C0 2 values for low-A^olatile bituminous coal would be 
higher. 

The term "bituminous," as applied to coal, is a very broad one. 
Coal low in volatile matter, viz.: low in hydrocarbons, which 
means low in hydrogen, are termed "semi-anthracite" or 
"semi-bituminous." In bituminous coals the Hydrogen con- 
tent will average in the neighborhood of 6 per cent of the 
total combustible, neglecting the Sulphur, which may run as 
high as 10 per cent of the commercial coal. In the above 
table it is assumed that the Hydrogen content is 6 per cent 
of the Carbon and Hydrogen total. 

When Hydrogen burns the product is water vapor, "H 2 0." This 
condenses in the burette of the gas analyzer and causes the 
gas sample to contract as shown in the diagram. Some of 



172 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



the Oxygen having - been used to combust the Hydrogen the 
theoretical percentage of C0 2 is necessarily lower. 
The theoretical percentage will be higher or lower in proportion 
to the Hvdrosren content of the coal. 

Gases Leaving the Furnace 

Diagram VI. 
(Theoretical diagram based upon average of California, Penn- 
sylvania and Texas Crude Petroleum) 




Shrinkage due to 
formation ofWattr 
Vapor fromCombushon 
of Hydroqen 





















1 










































































































































CO^th 


3/ r^_, 



Theoretical Percentage of C0 2 , 15 (Sulphur Disregarded). 

Crude petroleums vary in their composition in about the same 
way as the bituminous coals. The heat values range from 
17,000 to 20,000 B. t. u. Sulphurs range from a small fraction 
of 1 per cent to more than 2.5 per cent. The present practice 
of "skinning" crude oil for gasoline makes it impossible for 
anyone to say how the gases of combustion from the deliv- 
ered oil residues will analyze — the greater the percentage of 
volatile oils removed the higher the percentage of C0 2 from 
the residues will run. 



Appendix. 



173 



Gases Leaving the Furnace 

Diagram VII 

(Theoretical diagram based upon averages of Ohio, Pennsyl- 
vania and West Virginia Natural Gas) 





Shrinkage due to formation 
of water vapor from Corrt- 
BUst/on of Hydrogen. 


^^r%S v*M^ife ' *!^WBKPh^HHI 






































































* 






























































































co^,^ 


V 


_ 



Theoretical Percentage of C0 2 , 11.9 (Sulphur Disregarded). 

Natural gas varies even more in composition and heat value 
than fuel oil. The theoretical values given above, will not, 
however, be far from the real facts in any natural gas field. 

Again, let me say that whether you are burning coal, 
wood, oil, gas or buffalo chips; whether it is a cook stove, 
a steam boiler furnace or an internal combustion engine — 
it doesn't matter. Use the right amount of air for combustion 
and you will get the highest efficiency. The percentage of 



174 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

CO 2 serves as a guide to show the ratio of the air taken for a 
useful purpose and the air excess that is taken for wasteful 
results. Learn what percentage of CO^ there should be in 
the gases of combustion and make sure that you get it while 
avoiding CO. This is the beginning and the end of combus- 
tion efficiency. The details to be considered in working out 
your combustion problems will depend, as I have shown, upon 
the fuel, the furnace or other contrivance in which the fuel 
is burned and the circumstances as to load. etc. Coal burns 
from the bottom up, sawdust burns from the top down. High 
volatile coals require an over-air supply as well as air under 
the grate. Gas and oil should be mixed with air as far as 
possible prior to ignition. As you rise in the scale of fuels 
from lump anthracite to gas the air excess can be decreased. 
Owing to the great range and variety in fuels and not know- 
ing what particular fuel you may be using it is hard to be 

inc. 

There is no doubt that oil and gas have come to stay as 
fuels for power purposes. If the present rate of increase is 
sustained there will be as many internal combustion engines 
as steam engines in the power plants of the United States in 
- ears. We are only commencing to think about Gas Pro- 
ducers. We have the world's greatest supply of the world's, 
finest gas producer fuels — lignite coal and peat — and have 
barely touched them. Germany has shown us that the by- 
products of Gas Producers have enormous value. 

I have tried to show that every heat conversion is attended 
by a waste of energy and it follows that the fewer the conver- 
sions the less the energy loss will be. Gas and oil offer 
a short cut from fuel to power through the internal combus- 
tion engine. We can short-cut with coal through the help of 
the Gas Producer. The value of the Gas Producer by-products 
in some German plants exceeds the cost of the fuel. 

The Gas Producer arrests combustion and converts non- 
combustible COj into combustible CO. Hydrogen and Me- 
thane ( CH 4 . . are usually formed by reactive conversions along 
with the CO. The Producer is being operated most efficiently 
when there is a minimum of CO2 and no Oxygen. Excess air 
m eakens the Producer gas by dilution. Oxygen indicates 



Appendix. 175 

excess air. COo in Producer gas indicates still more excess 
air and also that some of the Carbon which should have been 
transformed into combustible CO is wasted by conversion to 
non-combustible CO2. The non-combustible Nitrogen carried 
by the gas will vary with the Oxygen and the CO2. Hence it 
follows that when we know the CO2 and Oxygen contents of 
Producer gas we come near knowing the quality of the gas. 
The man in charge of the Gas Producer can learn to work a 
Gas Analyzer for Oxygen and CO2. Gas samples may be 
taken at the purge pipe or immediately before the gas is 
delivered to the engine. The gas should contain not to exceed 
5 per cent CO2 and no more than a trace of Oxygen. 

Local conditions determine whether it is more economical 
to burn oil or gas under boilers rather than coal. The heat 
value of crude petroleum may be anywhere from 17,000 to 
22,000 B.t. u. per pound. It is a good coal that will run as high 
as 14,500 B. t. u. It costs less to handle oil than coal and 
there are, of course, no clinkers and ashes. Oil has other 
advantages that recommend it when it can be obtained on 
anything like equal terms with coal. 

It can be burned with a higher combustion efficiency be- 
cause, as already pointed out, it can be properly burned with 
a very small excess of air. Very high boiler capacities can 
be obtained more easily than with coal. By increasing the 
feed of oil the furnace temperatures may be raised to any 
point that the brick work of the furnace will stand. Coal 
deteriorates in storage and oil does not, but oil greatly in- 
creases fire hazard. Fuel oil has commenced to bid with 
Eastern power plants as a competitor of coal and when the 
Mexican situation settles it may prove a formidable rival, 
especially in the New England field. Many manufacturers 
could now find it worth while to think about oil but before 
deciding to burn it they will do well to avail themselves of 
expert advice. 

The rule that the furnace should be designed with ref- 
erence to the fuel that is to be burned has double force when 
we are considering oil and gas. The arrangement must be 
such that the danger of explosions is minimized and the possi- 
bility of damage due to heat localization is limited. 



176 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The space is lacking in which to discuss the merits of the 
various types of oil burners on the market. I must content 
myself with saying that the following conditions are essential 
to the efficient combustion of oil: 

1st. The oil must be thoroughly atomized. 

2nd. The atomized oil must be supplied with the re- 
quired quantity of air delivered in such a way that 
intimate mixture of the two can take place. 

3rd. The pressure at which the oil is delivered must be 
under absolute control. 

4th. The furnace must be so designed that the act of 
combustion may be finished before contact is had 
with the heating surfaces of the boiler. 

Assuming that the furnace and combustion chamber are 
of proper design and that the above conditions have been 
met it will be easier to attain and maintain a high state of 
efficiency than with a coal burning furnace. 

First make the settings absolutely tight and keep them so. 

Next make sure by means of analyzing the gases of com- 
bustion that the mixture is right. Some judgment may be 
had of the mixture by the appearance of the flame but it is 
bad policy to depend upon the eye or the judgment when more 
dependable means are available. 

Next make sure what draft should be used and then be 
sure that you use it. Draft is an extremely vital factor in 
the combustion of oil — even more vital than in the combus- 
tion of coal. 

I take the liberty of quoting from a letter relating to the 
experience of an engineer in a Texas oil burning plant: 

"It was found that the draft played a very important part 
in securing economical combustion and that it was necessary 
to pay very close attention to the state of the dampers. With 
'this in view a gage was made for setting the dampers, con- 
sisting of an iron frame in the form of a quadrant having 
thirty quarter-inch holes drilled in the quarter circle. It 
was presumed that this would furnish the necessary points 
for setting the damper. It was found, however, that the 
arrangement did not provide a sufficiently close adjustment 
so two additional holes were drilled for each original hole, 



Appendix. 



177 



making one hole for each degree in the quarter circle. It 
was now believed that a damper adjustment could be had 
that would prove close enough for the purpose, but such was 
not the case. 

"On entering the fire room one morning it was discovered 
that the fireman had removed the quarter-inch pin which 
secured the strap iron damper control to the quadrant and 
substituted a ten penny nail. The fireman was asked if he 
bad lost the pin and replied that he could get one-half per 
cent more C0 2 by using the nail instead of the pin. The 
quarter-inch pin was then filed eccentrically so that the 




— Power Plant Engineering. 

No matter what fuel you may be using, wateh tlie steam 
wastes. 



ITS How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

dampers could be adjusted" to the fraction of an inch and the 
dampers in this plant are now being set in that manner. 

•'After several months operation with this Samper ar- 
rangement a new boiler was installed and piped so that it 
could be connected to one of the four CO2 Recorder?. The 
ere instructed to adjust the damper, oil feed, etc., 
to the best of their ability without the aid of the Recorder. 
They did so and the Recorder was then cut in. It registered 
5 per Cent CO-. The firemen then, with the aid of the Re- 
corder, immediately brought the CO^ percentage up to 14. 

- proved that it was impossible for even a skilled and 
experienced fireman to accurately or even approximately judge 
the state of combustion without the aid of gas analyzing 
apparatus." 

The following table was prepared by the engineer of the 
plant referred to and is posted in his boiler room. It shows 
the firemen in dollars and cents the loss that the company 
will suffer if they are not attentive to their duties. 

The figures are based upon a consumption of 275 barrels 
of oil per day. costing 75 cents per barrel. Fifteen per cent 
CO2 was taken as the standard which would be about right 
for Texas crude oil. 



r cent CO-. 


Per cent Loss. 


Loss per Mo. 


Loss per Year. 


5 




>1.S56.17 


.$22,274.04 


6 


23 


1.423.07 


17.076.S4 


7 




1.113.70 


13.364.40 


8 


14 


22 


10.394.64 


9 


11 


680.66 


S.167.2-^ 


10 


B 


494.9S 


5.939.76 


11 


6 


371.23 


4.494.76 


12 


4 


274.49 


3.929. ^S 


13 





155.61 


2.237.32 


14 


1.5 


92. SI 


1.113.72 


15 


0.0 


0.00 


0.00 



Appendix. 179 



With them the Seed of 
Wisdom did I sow, 

And with my own hand 
labored it to grow; 

And this was all the Har- 
vest that I reap'd — ■ 

"I came like water, and 
like Wind I go." 



Omar Khayyam- 



180 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




MY TALE IS TOLD> 



Appendix. 181 

Advertisement 

Hays School of Combustion 

(Incorporated) 

STATE -LAKE BUILDING 
Chicago, U. S. A. 

R. C. ACERS, President. 

L. C. PETTIT, Yice-Pres. and Treasurer. 

H. It. NEWLEAN, Secretary. 



We offer a complete course in Fuel and Combustion En- 
gineering, by CORRESPONDENCE. 

The great need of a comprehensive course, teaching all that 
is needful of theory while expounding the best practise in the 
use of fuels, has long been recognized. Early in 1919 we 
arranged with Mr. Jos. W. Hays to write such a course for us 
and to act as Educational Director for the School. The course 
is now ready and we are enrolling hundreds of enthusiastic stu- 
dents. The opportunity that others are grasping is yours, if 
you want it. 

At Mr. Hays' suggestion the following staff of Reviewing 
and Advisory Editors was selected: 

BUR. DAVID MOFFATT MYERS.Aew York City. 

Formerly Advisory Engineer National Fnel Ad- 
ministration. 

>IR. FRED R. LOW, \ew York City. 
Editor POWER. 

PROF. S. W. PARR, Lrbana, Illinois. 

Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois. 

MK. ARTHUR L. RICE, Chicago. 

Editor POWER PLANT ENGINEERING. 

MR. JOSEPH HARRINGTON, Chicago. 

Formerly Administrative Engineer for Illinois, U. 
S. Fuel Administration. 

Every line that Mr. Hays has written for this Course has 
passed the scrutiny of these five gentlemen, each of whom is of 
national reputation. The course is, therefore, absolutely au- 
thoritative and embodies the best and most advanced thought 
of the day in all that relates to Combustion and the use of Fuels. 

PLEASE NOTE: 

1st. The Course is not written for men who wish to be 
Firemen; it is for those who wish to be something more than 
Firemen. Firemen are enrolling, many of them, and some of 
them will be showing other men how to fire before they have 
completed the Course. 



182 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

2nd. The Course was written for men who cannot avail 
themselves of the education offered by technical schools; for 
men who wish to be put in the way of qualifying- themselves 
for any position or any work involving an expert and thorough 
knowledge of Fuels and Combustion. 

. We have been surprised at the large number of graduates of 
Technical Schools who are enrolling as students in the Hays 
School of Combustion. They have had more than they need of 
theory and now wish to learn the application of theory to 
practise. 

In HOW TO BUILD UP FURNACE EFFICENCY, which you 
have just read, you have become acquainted with Mr. Hays in 
just one of his several moods. He can be as serious as anybody 
when the occasion requires. In the twelve Instruction Books 
which he has written for this Course you .will find a laugh when 
the humorous phase of a subject will serve to impress you with 
the truth he is trying to convey, but the tone of all of the In- 
struction Books is serious and scholarly. If vou liked HOW TO 
BUILD UP FURNACE EFFCIENCY you will be delighted with 
each of the twelve books of this Course. 

Following is a very brief outline of the Course: 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. I. 

Introduction to the Course. Short historical sketch of 
boilers and engines. The Steam Plant and the Cost of Power. 
Some preliminary and practical observations upon Boilers, Fur- 
naces and Draft. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. II 

Steam Boiler Furnaces and their classification. The Plain 
Boiler Furnace and its modifications. Tendencies in the develop- 
ment of Furnaces and Boilers. Rules of Practice for the Boiler 
Room, etc. In this Instruction Book Mr. Hays makes some very 
practical suggestions and emphasizes the importance of using 
"common sense" in the solution of power plant problems. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. III. 

In this book the author discusses the physical laws govern- 
ing liquids and fluids — especially gases — and follows with a 
clear explanation of Drafts, both natural and artificial. Such 
mathematics as it is necessary to introduce are brought within 
the understanding of everybody who has a knowledge of simple 
arithmetic. Upon mastering this book the student will be able 
to solve practically all mathematical problems relating to draft. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. IV. 

This is, perhaps, the most interesting book of the entire 
course. The subject is the Geology of Fuels, Coal, Oil and Gas. 
Mr. Hays leads up to them with several Chapters on General 
Geology and the student after reading these will really feel 
that he knows something about the principles of Geology. The 
subjects of coal mining and the dry and wet preparation of 
coals are discussed. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. V. 

Book V will prove almost as interesting as Book IV. In 
this book the student learns something about Physics and 
Chemistry and enough of Chemical formulas to serve all pur- 
poses in his study of the Chemistry of Combustion, the analysis 
of Coal, Oil, Gas, Water, etc. Attention is given to the problems 
relating to powdered coal, fuel oil and gas burning. 



Appendix. 183 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. VI. 

This book deals with the operation of modern Boiler Plants 
and the student is introduced to the numerous details of modern 
plant equipment. All of the leading types of modern boilers 
and furnaces are shown and the advantages of each are dis- 
cussed. Heating and Ventilation get their due attention and 
there is a further discussion of Fuel Oil and Gas. 
INSTRUCTION BOOK No. All. 

Smokeless Combustion is considered in this book. Mr. Hays 
believes that a few changes in furnace design, the use of 
mechanical stokers, liquid fuels and powdered coal will solve 
the smoke problem in big cities. The entire subject of smoke 
prevention is canvassed in a very sensible way. and, in this book 
as in all of the others, the student will find many things that 
will be helpful if he is connected with a steam plant. Applied 
combustion analysis is discussed again. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. VIII. 

Boiler and Furnace Testing: These subjects are discussed 
in all of their details and the student, after completing this 
book, should be able to conduct a standard boiler test with any 
fuel, coal oil or gas. The standard test codes are given, and 
the uses of combustion analysis in test work and the working 
out of heat balances are explained. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. IX. 

Book IX is devoted chiefly to the special combustion prob- 
lems offered by the locomotive. It is shown in many places in 
the earlier books that the laws governing combustion are of 
universal application and reference is made in many places to 
the locomotive. Book IX also discusses such special problems 
as relate to metallurgical furnaces, kilns, etc., and in each case 
the application of gas analysis is discussed. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. X. 

Industrial Gases and the Gas Producer are covered in 
Book X, together with the problems especially related to them, 
and it is shown how Combustion Analysis can be employed 
here, as elsewhere, with the greatest profit. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. XI. 

Book XI is devoted to Gas and Oil Engines, special atten- 
tion being given to the engine of the future — the oil burner of 
the Diesel type. 

INSTRUCTION BOOK No. XII. 

Reference to refrigeration problems is made many times in 
the Course. This Instruction Book covers what remains to 
be said. 

APPENDIX. 
The minimum ( f ralhematics will be given in the Course 
proper but it is realized that many students Will require help 
in mathematical work. The student will receive the appendix 
as soon as his papers show that he needs help. Students who 
are deficient in mathematical training will find the slide rule 
of great assistance, especially in the extraction of roots. By 
the use of logarithms almost anyone can make calculations that 
would be difficult or impossible by arithmetic. Sufficient Algebra 
will be given to enable the student to understand algebraic 
expressions and work simple equations. 

The entire course is profusely illustrated. 

Write for handsome free illustrated booklet, entitled 

'COMBUSTION EFFICIENCY." Use the blank on next page. 



184 Hoiv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

Mr. H. L. Newlaan, 

Sec y HAYS SCHOOL OF COJIBI ST10>. 

State-Lake Building. 
Chicago, 111., U. S. A. 



Dear Sir:— I would like full particulars relating tc the 
Course in Fuel and Combustion Engineering, offered by the 
Hays School of Combustion, also copy oi your booklet, 
"Combustion Efficiency.' 



Yours truly, 



Name. 



Street Number 



City and State. 



Occupation. 



Pate 19 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

029 822 370 3 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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